Re: Importance of history
just about economics or that the economic side of things is necessarily politically decisive. Greg: I am in tiotal agreement with this and again very concise and well stated. Jurriaan: In the USA, for example, I would say the economic crisis does not weigh heavily right now, nevertheless there appears to be a substantial social crisis and an ideological crisis. If Bush has decided to devote a whole army to defending American soil, I imagine he isn't just worried about exploding Arabs in supermarkets but also about the erosion of the urban social fabric, about the stability of American society itself. It seems to be a step towards the militarisation of American society. Greg: I would add another element here a legacy of imperialism and the US being the single remaining super-power. In this the US has no real future hence it follows the well worn track of seeing slavation as never-ending war. I beleiev other contradictions towards bourgeois internationalism threaten US supremacy which for historical reasons it is unweilling to relquinish. Its policies thus appear to me bereft of real direction, rather they are policies designed mereely to uphold US unilateralism and by this aits arbitray power - it cannot go on for ever but I shiver at the amount ofblood that migt be spilt until it resolves itself. Jurriaan: As regards Lutte Ouvriere, I'm glad they got over 5 percent of the vote, because then at least (so I am told) they get their campaign money back. Voters who feel especially guilty about voting for the far left can always atone for their "ultraleftist" sins by voting for Chirac the second time round. I don't recommend it, but the possibility is there. The real point is that votes for a bourgeois government are not the essential thing to watch, they are merely an indicator of more profound social tendencies at work. Greg: Again in the main I agree with your view, but surely the question is to move past the passive, sectarian and oppositionalist left and move towards attacks on the state itself (for democratic reform, for a more proletarian outlook) afterall the whole thing was a by-product of a cocked system of representation - why can't we as a left assuat at least these structural problems rather then go through this nonsense which results from them. Here I would echo a Popular Front, not a nagative one against fascism and war but a Popular Front for a democratic state and democratised economy. Sorry to slip this one in Jurriaan it was a bit unfair, but I like how you have stepped back and summed up the current sitation, perhaps we should talk more on the political conclusions that can be drawn from it. I couch things in terms of Popular Front, but leave this aside altogether, why cannot the left come up with an overarching policy that reflects just thiose things you listed above, but not as problems, but in terms of resolutions. This type of thing is what I favour, getting out from the shadows stating clearly that these problems exist and that solutions are obvious and obtainable and then go about forming them into fighting ploitical platforms not necessarily restricted to the political. That is how I understand the essence of Popular Frontism and why I keep coming back to it - it just makes sense. Yours in comradely solidarity Greg Greg Schofield Perth Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] Modular And Integrated Design - programing power for all Lestec's MAID and LTMailer http://www.lestec.com.au also available at Amazon.com
Re: Importance of history
Jurrien, I can only make a short reply at this stage. First I must state that what you said below makes sense historically and politically at the policy level. But I hasten to add there is a whole other dimension to this question. The Popular Front period, at least in Australia, was the most significant inroad communism made into Australian society (I would argue very much because the meaning of policty was implemented at the rank and file level). In a few short years the Communist Party went from being a fringe grou into becoming the largest political organisation in the country, the influence of communist ideas on all apsects of culture, literature and social life became incrediably widespread. The political organisation of the working class reached new levels, everything from unions to niegboruhood organisations flourishing and tremendous pressure was placed on the ruling class. when the war ended so did the policy and with it the decline in militant working class organisation and political/social innovation (not all at once but clearly enough in retrospect). The defeat of fascism left the "Front" dangling and the party at the time simply begun looking elsewhere for direction (neglecting reshaping the front strategy). The main reason I point towards it today is that it tends to flew in the face of the tradition of limited alliances, abstentionism and sloganeering which I think all too well typifies the left. The conception of struggle within the Popular Front thus represents to me a clear statement and hence something well worth trying to apply to circumstances today. Now I would say that I don't think this is an attempt to revive the past (who can do such things) but as a period which is useful to be applied. Therefore not as you suggest resulting from an inability to analyse the present, but rather steming directly from an analysis of the present. Involved in this is an implied criticism of the left as it is and the Front is being used as point of focus to begin discussing seriously what we should be doing. However, unless a set of paremeters are found for such a practical debate (like taking the old Popular Front seriously as an example of stragey) it is almost impossible to discuss strategy without simply repeating variations of what the left is already doing and for the most part doing badly. I hope this makes sense, but somewhere we have to be able to break with what we are and ebgin discussing what we must become. Greg --- Message Received --- From: Jurriaan Bendien <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 28 Apr 2002 14:06:07 +0200 Subject: [PEN-L:25476] Importance of history Even if the "popular front" struggle against fascism had certain merits (because of course broad opposition to the fascists had to be forged), the point is that is was a belated attempt to correct a mistaken policy (the ultra-left "third period" line) over the preceding 7 years or so. Popular frontism in the 1930s was a policy which: - arrived to late; - failed to smash the fascist movement; - was imposed uniformly on the member countries of the Comintern without proper regard for local conditions (leaving aside the issue of class-independence). Why superimpose the political language of a period of defeats more than fifty years ago on today's situation ? This attempt to find quick historical analogies with a distant past seems to be more a case of an inability to analyse the present. __ Greg Schofield Perth Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] Modular And Integrated Design - programing power for all Lestec's MAID and LTMailer http://www.lestec.com.au also available at Amazon.com
Re: Re: Importance of history
ere wrong. On Thu, Apr 25, 2002 at 07:12:53PM -0400, Hari Kumar wrote: > Wrote Michael Perelman: > "How is an analysis of Stalin going to help us understand the world > today? History, of course, is important, especially when it is relevant, > but in matters such as Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, etc. the subject leads > to too much emotional finger-pointing to lead to much. I recall that on > one list -- not pen-l -- Henry Liu was called a fascist for suggesting > that the Nazis had some economic accomplishments. Maybe my memory is > playing tricks on me. " > A REPLY: > As far as I am concerned, this list is not a serious place to take on > issues related to the Stalin-Trotsky divide. I am continually amazed > [and impressed actually] at Charles' fortitude in persisting in trying > to discuss these types of issues with most of you. Let us face it - > most - if not all of you have made up your minds. I somewhat except a > few individuals - including Louis Project who at times has an ability to > take an objective viewpoint. But Michael - your question is ridiculously > nihilistic and in fact, belies the tenor of your own general comments > and your more general work. You cannot be seriously saying, that one > cannot learn from history? As regards the matter that started this > little series going - Dimitrov - It was he who put into practice in > Bulgaria a policy of unite with one's own bourgeoisise; Dimitrov was set > free by the Nazis; Dimitrov policies allowed the French CP to preside > over the destruction of the French revolution: In essence Dimitrov > proposed and installed the revisionist policy of : "A United Front From > Above at All Costs"; as opposed to the Lenin-Stalin line of : "A UF From > Above & Below - With Strict conditions". > Now Michael: Are you seriously saying that such lessons are not relevant > today? > Hari Kumar for Alliance - (Articles on Dimitrov and this analysis at > that web-site-Go to index). > -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] - Greg Schofield Perth Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] Modular And Integrated Design - programing power for all Lestec's MAID and LTMailer http://www.lestec.com.au also available at Amazon.com
Re: Re: Le Pen triumph thanks to ultra-leftists
Louis I believe you make the mistake of over identifying every thing that happened in the world communist movement as directly being an expression of Stalinism. Stalin was acting on contradictory forces, despite his claims to being all powerful he was more often then not a reactor to situations well beyond his control. The non-aggression pact flew in the face of the Popular Front and caused all soughts of problems precisely because the USSR dressed it up in frontist expressions, in reality it was a direct result of the macinations of great powers. Stalin found the "allies" completely passive in the face of German agression, he feared that the West was simply serving up the USSR to the Nazis and there was more than a grain of truth to this. Ironically it was the alliance with the USSR which brought the West into confrontation with Germany - however this had little to do with Stalin's motives as his unpreparedness for the Nazi attack in 1941 fully demonstrated (as a matter of state power Stalin was completely faithfull to the pact and desperate that the German's leave him alone - once again he demonstrated his niaviety and stupidity which underlaid his cunning ruthlessness). Again what does this have to do with the Popular Front? It is all perfectly understandable via international state alliances. As for Charles' statement that the Popular Front was (partly) responsible for the defeat of fascism, this is a reasonable reading of the period. Without the Front there was a real chance of the UK coming to permanent accord with Hitler - Churchill all too aware (he was an early and staunch admire of Nazism) that such a "peace" would bring about social revolution his position during the war can only be understand as his fear of the social results of making peace. Likewise it is difficult to imagine the resistence in europe without the communists and the links established prior to occupation by the Popular Front. hen again we could also mention the second front campaign, there were clear indications tht the western allies were only too willing to wait until Russia had ground down German power and in the process ground itself into the ground. There was tremendous pressure to open up the second front precisely so this would not come about. Of course it is difficult to rerun history and take out a vital element like the Popular Front, however, it is obvious the Front played a major role in shaping social and political attitudes, that it took decades to erode the power of the Popular Front and social demands which stemed from it and that the war may well have turned out very differently without it. Greg --- Message Received --- From: Louis Proyect <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 14:37:43 -0400 Subject: [PEN-L:25364] Re: Le Pen triumph thanks to ultra-leftists >CB: On this issue, what about the fact that fascism _was_ defeated by the Popular Front. Do you mean the Allies? I wouldn't exactly call the military alliance between Stalin and Churchill and Roosevelt a Popular Front. It was a military alliance between sovereign nations. For that matter, I saw it as eminently principled for Stalin to have signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler (despite the costly illusions that arose out of this.) Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org __ Greg Schofield Perth Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] Modular And Integrated Design - programing power for all Lestec's MAID and LTMailer http://www.lestec.com.au also available at Amazon.com
Re: Re: Re: Re: Le Pen triumph thanks to ultra-leftists
24 Apr 2002 08:25:34 -0400 Subject: [PEN-L:25347] Re: Re: Re: Le Pen triumph thanks to ultra-leftists Greg Schofield: >>The Popular Front was one of the great modern innovations in effective political struggle of the working class, at the plain of how communists should work it relates directly to the Communist Manifesto applying the same principles to the specific question of anti-fascist struggle.<< It certainly was an innovation, although how great it was is another story entirely. Until the rise of Stalin, Marxism fought for class independence. The workers in late 19th century Germany maintained their own press, ran their own candidates and were hostile to any capitalist politician. It was this party that Lenin and the Bolsheviks sought to emulate, which is a fact understood by few self-appointed "vanguards" today. When giving an example of a vanguard in "What is to be Done", Lenin cited Kautsky's party. In the "Erfurt Program" of 1892, Kautsky wrote: "The interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are of so contrary a nature that in the long run they cannot be harmonized. Sooner or later in every capitalist country the participation of the working-class in politics must lead to the formation of an independent party, a labor party." The People's Front was an attempt to harmonze the interests of the workers and the progressive bourgeoisie, who supposedly would be united against those elements of the ruling class that opted for fascism. This analysis was anti-Marxist in its essence. The bourgeoisie has no real committment to democracy. When the Weimar Republic failed to defend capitalist property relations, it threw its support behind Hitler. Today outfits like Goldman-Sachs, my former employer, lavish millions of dollars on Republican and Democrat alike. If these two parties fail to maintain a stable environment for capitalist profits, corporate rulers will investigate outfits to the right starting with Pat Buchanan. The problem in Spain is that the left parties, including the CP and SP but the anarchists as well, did not want to upset the People's Front unity. So they reined in the revolutionary left. When the revolutionary left refused to be reined in, they shot its leaders like Andres Nin. People in Spain were willing to risk their lives for economic as well as political democracy. When they figured out that the People's Front was not willing to smash the old agrarian despotic class relations, they lost their fighting will. In a struggle against fascism, you have to have clearly defined class politics. Watering down social and economic demands leads to the triumph of fascism. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org Greg Schofield Perth Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] Modular And Integrated Design - programing power for all Lestec's MAID and LTMailer http://www.lestec.com.au also available at Amazon.com
Re: Re: Le Pen triumph thanks to ultra-leftists
ons of bourgeois >democracy. This is true. But to fight fascism effectively, you need to have an aroused working-class movement. Tieing the trade unions to "third way" type politicians, a contemporary version of the Peoples Front, only breeds apathy. Against this apathy, the rightwing can make headway. Financial Times (London), March 19, 2002 MANIFESTO LAUNCH MAIN PARTIES' OFFERINGS APPEAR SIMILAR: By ROBERT GRAHAM DATELINE: PARIS Lionel Jospin, France's Socialist prime minister, yesterday pledged to create 900,000 jobs and to deliver Euros 18bn (Dollars 16bn, Pounds 11bn) in tax cuts over the next five years, should he win the presidential elections. But a 40-page election manifesto unveiled by Mr Jospin at his campaign headquarters in Paris yesterday gave little indication of how the measures could be financed within the constraints of deficit reduction targets agreed with the European Commission. Instead, he laid emphasis on ensuring the French economy achieved an annual growth rate of 3 per cent. The first round of the presidential elections takes place on April 21, with a second round run-off between the two leading candidates due on May 5. The publication of Mr Jospin's manifesto, entitled "I Commit Myself", comes after President Jacques Chirac outlined his rival programme, called "Commitment to France", last week. The most striking aspect of the two main presidential rivals' proposals is the absence of big differences. On the central campaign issue of law and order, the two are almost embarrassingly similar, with each camp already accusing the other of electoral plagiarism. Mr Jospin has all but dropped the word socialism in a clear attempt to win the centre-ground by avoiding identification as the Socialist party's candidate. The main area where the two programmes diverge is how to sustain growth. Mr Chirac has made promises of reducing labour cost overheads by cutting employers' social security contributions and easing the burden of the 35-hour week for small businesses. He hopes to persuade business to resume investing while encouraging consumption through promises of big tax cuts. He is committed to reducing income tax by one-third by 2007. Yesterday, Mr Jospin also said he wanted to see a cut in income tax while aligning France with the rest of the EU through the introduction of income tax at source. He said the tax cuts would be financed largely through increases in capital gains charges. In addition, the premier pledged to halve the household property tax (taxe d'habitation). This reform was promised under his outgoing administration but was dropped for fear of upsetting middle-class voters. It would involve a big overhaul of property register values and shift the burden of the tax from low-income to high-income groups. On job creation, both men have committed themselves to schemes to permit training throughout a person's working life. But Mr Jospin has distinguished himself by a plan to bring 200,000 people aged over 50 back into work through special contracts. France lags behind its EU partners in bringing this age group into the workforce and the scheme compares with the huge effort devoted to providing youth jobs in the public sector since 1997. Mr Chirac suggested the introduction of a scheme to allow those under 25 to be subsidised to find a vocation or help in humanitarian work. To get round the high cost of hiring unskilled labour, the main pool of jobless in France, he proposed special contracts for those aged under 22 where employers would be exempt of social security contributions. Louis Proyect Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org ___ Greg Schofield Perth Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] Modular And Integrated Design - programing power for all Lestec's MAID and LTMailer http://www.lestec.com.au also available at Amazon.com
Re: Re: Fidel vs. the New Economy; More Axis of Evil Ahead?
Like Hitler the US seems to be dreaming of war without end, war as the resolution to every inconvenience. Greg --- Message Received --- From: "Ian Murray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, 8 Mar 2002 15:52:59 -0800 Subject: [PEN-L:23721] Re: Fidel vs. the New Economy; More Axis of Evil Ahead? the US gov. is attacked every day by hackers from all over the planet. Where's Dr Strangelove? Ian - Original Message - From: "Michael Perelman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, March 08, 2002 3:38 PM Subject: [PEN-L:23719] Fidel vs. the New Economy; More Axis of Evil Ahead? > STUDYING CUBA'S ABILITY USE NET TO DISRUPT U.S. > A senior U.S. government official says that the Bush administration has > begun a review of Cuba's ability to use the Internet to disrupt this > country's military communications or damage other U.S. interests. Last > month, White House technical advisor Richard Clarke told a congressional > > subcommittee that if the U.S. is attacked through cyberspace, it could > respond militarily: "We reserve the right to respond in any way > appropriate: through covert action, through military action, and any of > the > tools available to the president." (AP/USA Today 7 Mar 2002) > http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2002/03/07/cuba-cyberatt ack.htm > > -- > > Michael Perelman > Economics Department > California State University > [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Chico, CA 95929 > 530-898-5321 > fax 530-898-5901 > Greg Schofield Perth Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ ___ Use LesTecML Mailer (http://www.lestec.com.au/) * Powerful filters. * Create you own headers. * Have email types launch scripts. * Use emails to automat your work. * Add comments on receive. * Use scripts to extract and check emails. * Use MAID to create taylor-made solutions. * LesTecML Mailer is fully controlled by REXX. * A REXX interpreter is freely available. ___ ___
Re: Re: Re: forces of production
Sorry Miychi I was being flippant, so your confusion is completely understandable. The formula I used is a nonsense, I would only go as far as to say there is a grain of truth within it, but no more. I will therefore only defend it to this small degree. There is tremendous productive potential not only within the means of production but in the level of culture and skill amongst the world's working class. The potential is far greater then the the relations of property and bourgeois productive relations can hope to realize. This proposition has always been abstractly true - that is the potential to produce is greater then the relations that allow actual productions, in this sense the relations of production act to restrain productive abilities. However, in capitalism's younger days when the means of production were, from the standpoint of today barely, developed the gap between realisation and potential was pretty small. In otherwords if the proletariat had actually gained power in 1848 and everything else went well for it, it could perhaps realise more production then the bourgeoisie could, but the difference would be marginal. As the means of production and the skill and knowledge of production grew this margin also grows. That is even though the bourgeoisie grow productive capacity hugely, they do so at the price of smothering ever more of the productive potential. In otherwords the relations of production act as an anchor on the practical development of productive capacity as realisied productive capacity - or to put it another way, the gap between what is actually produced/consumed and the full potential of produtive capacity widens because the relations of production come more and more into conflict with the productive powers. In essence this is part origin of the increasing relative impoverishment of the working class, also it underscores the deficit nature of capitalist growth (manifested in the wasteful depletion of natural wealth) and the tendency to so exploit markets that it limits the level of consumption and sometimes throws production into needless and wasteful over-production. These are problems which stem from the enormous potential of the production as measured against realisied production. My reasons for using the absurd formula was my belief that appreciating the potential of the productive forces lies in the detail of production itself. In otherwords, being able to state what production should be doing without exceeding the boundaries of what is possible in order to confront the relations of production (property and power) directly as the immediate barrier to doing some social good. I may well be wrong - it may well be possible to quantify the productive forces - hence I threw this in as whimsical criticism. By my understanding of productive forces it should not be possible to quantify it (for it falls wholly within the political), but perhaps I have the wrong idea - again my apologies for this confusion and I will refrain from this type of intervention in the future. --- Message Received --- From: miychi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 18:18:42 +0900 Subject: [PEN-L:23373] Re: Re: forces of production On 2002.03.02 08:11 AM, "Greg Schofield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > This is not a reply to anyone in particular - > > Productive Forces --- P = (M + L) - R > > Productive Potential = Means of Production plus Living Labour minus the > Relations of Production > > Of course you need to divide the product by "N" (Consumption Needs) but I > don't know how to do this in an email. > > Most things can be represented algerbraically which is not the same thing as > being quantifiable. MIYACHI TATSUO Psychiatric Department KOMAKI MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL JOHBUSHI,1-20 KOMAKI CITY AICHI Pre JAPAN 0568-76-4131 [EMAIL PROTECTED] Comrade Greg Schofield Mean of production can't become any "force" To become "force" it must act on some material. Means of production itself are simply things, not forces. Secondly Iiving labor is certainly forces, but itself is VARIABLE CAPITAL Which can't function without means of production In Capital Marx says "The various factors of the labour-process play different parts in forming the value of the product. The labourer adds fresh value to the subject of fiis labour by expending upon it a given amount of additional labour, no matter what the specific character and utility of that labour may be. On the other hand, the values of the means of production used up in the process are preserved, and present themselves afresh as constituent parts of the value of the product; the values of the cotton and the spindle, for instance, re-appear again in the value of the yarn. The value of the means of production is therefore preserved, by bein
Re: RE: Re: forces of production
Sorry all - my sad idea of a joke. "Productive Forces --- P = (M + L) - R" Of course it is a nonsense, but Jim you can add labour to the means of production - just not mathematically. Apologisies all round Greg Schofield Perth Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ ___ Use LesTecML Mailer (http://www.lestec.com.au/) * Powerful filters. * Create you own headers. * Have email types launch scripts. * Use emails to automat your work. * Add comments on receive. * Use scripts to extract and check emails. * Use MAID to create taylor-made solutions. * LesTecML Mailer is fully controlled by REXX. * A REXX interpreter is freely available. ___ ___ --- Message Received --- From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 15:35:31 -0800 Subject: [PEN-L:23355] RE: Re: forces of production Greg Schofield > This is not a reply to anyone in particular - > > Productive Forces --- P = (M + L) - R > > Productive Potential = Means of Production plus Living Labour > minus the Relations of Production > > Of course you need to divide the product by "N" (Consumption > Needs) but I don't know how to do this in an email. > > Most things can be represented algerbraically which is not > the same thing as being quantifiable. I don't get this one. M and L can't be added to each other, while both of these (and P) are really hard to aggregate. R can't be quantified at all. JD
Re: forces of production
This is not a reply to anyone in particular - Productive Forces --- P = (M + L) - R Productive Potential = Means of Production plus Living Labour minus the Relations of Production Of course you need to divide the product by "N" (Consumption Needs) but I don't know how to do this in an email. Most things can be represented algerbraically which is not the same thing as being quantifiable. Greg Schofield Perth Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ ___ Use LesTecML Mailer (http://www.lestec.com.au/) * Powerful filters. * Create you own headers. * Have email types launch scripts. * Use emails to automat your work. * Add comments on receive. * Use scripts to extract and check emails. * Use MAID to create taylor-made solutions. * LesTecML Mailer is fully controlled by REXX. * A REXX interpreter is freely available. ___ ___ --- Message Received --- From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, 1 Mar 2002 12:47:58 -0800 Subject: [PEN-L:23350] forces of production [was: RE: [PEN-L:23348] Re: RE: Question to Various comments in In Digest 77] Michael Perelman writes: > Marx's idea of social forces may be grounded more in common sense than in some deep theory. One other factors that I see in his understanding of the transition to socialism runs as follows: people will see the tremendous social forces (capabilities or potential) of capitalist production alongside the actual performance, leading to great dissatisfaction and a readiness to make a change.< right. BTW, I think that the pair of forces of production vs. the relations of production can be seen in volume I of CAPITAL's chapter on the labor process (ch. 7). The forces of production listed in section 1 on the production of use-values, while the relations of production are discussed in section 2 on the production of surplus-value. > I remain very skeptical of any attempt to give precise numerical calculations for any part of Marx's theory. Marx does use rough, back of the envelope, calculations from time to time. They seem appropriate.< quantification definitely seems a bad idea when it comes to the forces of production. > Recasting Marx in algebraic, mathematical, or precise numerical form, seems a bit foreign to his overall project, which his understanding the nature of capitalist society and the weaknesses that will lead to the creation of a socialist state.< I think that quantification makes sense in specifically macroeconomic or microeconomic contexts. Of course, Marx's theory crosses these boundaries, mixing economics with what's known as "sociology" these days. JD
Re: Re: Re: RE: God
Carrol, presupositions are funny things. Yes, saying that God is a projection of (hu)man does sit upon the foundation that God does not exist. Existence being a natural state. However, existence is not an issue with theists (at least the less stupid kind), as God is conceived as being Super Natural and thus beyond such simple proofs and disproofs. , Not in the Begining there was God. What matters to reasonable theists is the relationship to God not its separate existence. Hence Hegel could have God made into the Absolute idea and still remain a consistant theist, an idea, or word for that matter, does not have a corporal being and there is a long tradition of theist arguements along similiar lines. Feurbach's assertion was that God far from being a supernatural being was in fact a subnatural one, a product of natural life, a reflection of (hu)man existence rather than the otherway round. Now far from dismissing theological concerns on the basis that the object of the concern does not have a corporal existence, which is an obvious point to most theologists, such concerns have a historical interest (in revealing human comprehension of itself over time) and because many still subsribe to this ideology some political relevance as well. Bertram Russels' agnosticism was always a slieght of hand, just a more sophisticated application of old fashion materialist atheism. There has always been a quaintly Edwardian flavour to such debates, a reaction to an imperial ideology where God was an Englishman pure and simple. Atheism (without God) is not necessarily dependant the question of the existence or otherwise, but putting the belief in God into proper perspective (as a subnatural comprehension, rather than a supernatural revelation). I would go as far as to say that an atheist who takes this philosophical understanding seriously must be fairly well versed in theology, have some sympathetic understanding of the religious impulse and some understanding of how it fits into the full flow of human history. Mostly what passes for atheism is no such thing, rather just anti-clericalism dressed up as strongly biased agnosticism (ie concerned in this case with the non-existence of God). It is the complementary opposite of fundementalism where the corporal existence of God is taken as the begining and end of belief (some faith that must rest itself not on faith but fancy - to make a theological point). Carrol, my disagreement also has a practical aspect to it, especially in reagrd to fundementalism. A militant "atheism" tends to drive all Christians into one camp, this should be avoided where-ever possible. More effectively is to, from time to time, use purely theological arguments to deny that fundementalism is Christian at all - accusing them of being modern Pharasees seems to have a shaking effect and allows alliances to made with the more sophisticated theists. I make a point of never accepting a declaration of Christian belief go unchallenged, and always assualting fundementalism on theological terms first and foremost - the arrogant sods usually find this unexpected and many I believe have never really had to think about religion much at all, and most are innocent of any theological knowledge. --- Message Received --- From: Carrol Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 19:13:19 -0600 Subject: [PEN-L:23272] Re: Re: RE: God Greg Schofield wrote: > > It could be said that God exists is so far as it > is a projection of (hu)man (which puts a different > twist on atheism then the simple contention that > it does not). Carrol: No it doesn't; the claim that god is a human projection _presupposes_ the non-existence of god, the simple contention that it does not." For unless one first assumes the simple non-existence of god there is no need to develop an explanation for human conceptions of and belief in that which is not. Greg Schofield Perth Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ ___ Use LesTecML Mailer (http://www.lestec.com.au/) * Powerful filters. * Create you own headers. * Have email types launch scripts. * Use emails to automat your work. * Add comments on receive. * Use scripts to extract and check emails. * Use MAID to create taylor-made solutions. * LesTecML Mailer is fully controlled by REXX. * A REXX interpreter is freely available. ___ ___
Re: RE: God
--- Message Received --- From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 26 Feb 2002 09:31:43 -0800 Subject: [PEN-L:23257] RE: God Good points below (Jim and Charles). It could be said that God exists is so far as it is a projection of (hu)man (which puts a different twist on atheism then the simple contention that it does not). By the way, the original sin was eating of the tree of knowledge, which proved its own punishment, as Adam and Eve sought to clothe their nakedness (ie sought possessions because of this knowledge). God's expulsion of them from the Garden of Eden appears as a final confirmation of this sin, something of a foregone conclusion given what they had done. The story is simple and very profound, once at one with nature, they were naked (without possessions) but they broke with this, gained knoweldge and because of this could no longer live in innocence, knowledge caused them to be ashamed at not having clothes (possessions), knowing their nakedness was to know how to rectify it and begin the labour to do so. IT is an old story large parts taken from Babylonian/Summarian sources (Epic of Gilgamesh which is also transformed into the story of Noah). Quite possibly both stories reach back to the transition from hunting gathering to agriculture. The snake is a low thing of the earth - thought to issue forth from the bowels of the earth, while its yearly slothing of skin was seen as representing the change of seasons which dictate the fertility of the soil. Thus this feature of the earth (its fertility) tempted "man" with the fruit of the tree of knowledge - it was woman who took to this (discovers of horticulture) from which man ate. Of course a lot of other ideas are piled on top, but given the lack of science and abstract nature of theology, not a bad story at all - God is truely the reflection of humanity. The problem with fundementalists is that they really don't try to understand what they read. JIM: Charles writes:>Your view sounds like Marx's. Marx doesn't say God doesn't exist, but that God is alienated man ( which I take to be humanity). And directly to what you say, he says the basis of irreligious criticism is man (sic) makes religion, religion doesn't make man. ( A feminist critique might note that it is indeed men who make religion, not women)< I have been influence by Marx, a lot. It's also Freud's view -- and Feuerbach's -- that God is a human projection of our own inner images. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine > -Original Message- > From: Charles Brown [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Sent: Tuesday, February 26, 2002 9:07 AM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: [PEN-L:23256] God > > > God > by Devine, James > 26 February 2002 15:10 UTC > > > > > JD: I wasn't raised as a Christian, but as I understand that > faith, it's > humanity that's the source of evil. (The Devil is most > important to the > fundamentalists, not the more sophisticated Christians.) > "God" gave us free > will and we mostly chose to be evil. In my view (as far as I > can tell), we > also created good (and God), along with the definition of > good vs. evil. > > > > > CB: "Fundamentally" speaking, the Devil tempted Adam and Eve > in the Garden of Eden. The Devil made them do it and the > Devil "do" exist. > > But consistent with what you say, the first act of free will, > independent of God, is the original sin , in this mythology. > The Devil seduced them to use free will. > > But then the Devil, the Ruler of the World and Earthliness , > is also sort of the moving force for materialism, and against > idealism and religion. > > So, then "fundamentally", we materialists and free thinkers > are the Devil's children > > Interestingly with regards to your "good and evil"comment, > the forbidden fruit was from the tree of the knowledge of > good and evil. I interpret this myth to mean , paradoxically, > that the original sin resulted in the origin of morality ( > "knowledge of good and evil"). This is suggestive as perhaps > a view through the glass of ancient mythology darkly of the > origin of homo sapiens in the origin of culture or symbolling > in the form of , for example, the distinction between good > and evil, between do's and don'ts. > > > Your view sounds like Marx's. Marx doesn't say God doesn't > exist, but that God is alienated man ( which I take to be > humanity). And directly to what you say, he says the basis of > irreligious criticism is
Re: RE: ancient writing
--- Message Received --- From: Michael Pollak <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 14:05:21 -0500 (EST) Subject: [PEN-L:22792] RE: ancient writing Could not help but reply to the below. Micahael's rendition of Jewish and Eygptian history below is good. But it is such an interesting period so unlike our own. Undoubtly the Hyskos are an ancenstral group to many of the people's of the levant and they did give the Eygptians a hard time. The problem we all face is the influence of religious faith in this area of history and the free use of anachronistic images to describe it. Ancient enslavement took many forms, it was the general relation of a non-relative seeking sustinance and protection of a stronger household. The story of Joseph who becomes a part of the Pharonic Household is believable. The famine which forces his erstwhile relatives to come to Eygpt is also not unexpected in the Ancient world - in effect they give a portion of their future labour (absolute slavery on a large scale would have been very rare if not imppossible). Thus the jews as a tribe could well have been enslaved to the Royal House for the price of being fed from its graneries, this would not necessarily be a big thing in the Eygptian records and the tribal numbers need not to have been that large (a few thousand perhaps). For this time of enslavement the Jews would have become part of the Royal House, in fact members of it. The Biblical story is consistant with this as is the labour chore given to the Jews (the building of a new Pharonic city). Likewise in the politics of Eygpt this massive strengthening of the Royal House would have set up contradictions both within this house and the other clans (the Jews being denied straw for the bricks they were making seems to have such an origin). The Exodus story is nothing extraordinary within this context, regardless of the the micraculous (I cannot help think that the curse of killing the first born of Eygpt may well be a veiled reference to child sacrifice brought by the Jews from the levant (a Phoneacian practice, and also referred to in the story of Abraham). But this is speculation. Freud offered an interesting thesis that Akenaten was in fact Moses (this is not as absurd as it may sound). Were the Eygptians nasty to the Jews? Not a straightfoward thing in the ancient world. The Egyptians (probably just the royal house from the clan temple of Amen) fed them when they were in desperate straights, they took from their own granery their food and sustained the tribe, how should a tribe pay back such generosity? On Mon, 11 Feb 2002, Devine, James wrote: > >Is there really much evidence that the Pharoahs were particularly nasty > to this particular tribe of Canaanites (see below)?< > > I don't think the issue is whether or not the Pharoahs were nastier to the > Hebrews than to anyone else. The point is that they were nasty to them. Actually the point is that there isn't one bit of evidence that the Pharoahs ever were nasty to them. The is no mention the voluminous historical record of the New Kingdom of there ever having been any Hebrews in Egypt at all, enslaved or otherwise. And needless to say, no record of the Exodus. That doesn't settle it, of course. There many ingenious ways of teasing fragmentary evidence, and there are lots of people who are invested in this story being true. And there is a case to be made that there must be something behind a story that a people has made such singular efforts to memorialize, especially since slave origins is something most peoples back then tried to forget. But we can certainly say it's not proved that the Egyptians ever mistreated the Hebrews. BTW, one of the many ingenious (but plausible) attempts to account for the Exodus story, by the respected Egyptologist D.B. Redmond, is as a folk-memory of relations between the Egyptians and the Hyskos (who he claims were a Semitic-language speaking people. Josphephus, for what it's worth, refers to the Hyksos as "our ancestors"). But if that's the case, the Jews' ancestors gave at least as well as they got from the Egyptians. One last ironic footnote: AFAIK, the single and only Egyptian reference to Israel is the famous "Israel stele," which refers them as a group with origins in Palestine, and never mentions any previous history of their being guest workers in Egypt. The irony is that this first appearance of the Jews in history is also the first report of their being successfully wiped out. Greg Schofield Perth Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] ___ ___ Use LesTecML Mailer (http://www.lestec.com.au/) * Powerful filters. * Create you own headers. * Have email types launch scripts. * Use emails to aut
Re: Re: theorizing capitalism
Another trouble (re below) is that "modes of production" is an abstraction defined by the dominant relation of production. To be dominant that relation does not have to be exclusive or majoritarian. A country may have no wage-capital to speak of and still be dominated by the capital-labour relation (obviously from elesewhere) - it is the dominance which gives directional character to the whole. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: "Romain Kroes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 22 Jan 2002 12:16:57 +0100 Subject: [PEN-L:21709] Re: theorizing capitalism > > >And if capitalism were not a mode of production, but a mode of > accumulation?< > > it's both. > > >And if moreover it were nothing but the cumulation process, whatever the > mode of it?< > > I don't think we can separate the statics from the dynamics. > JD > The trouble is that if capitalism is a mode of production, as Marx defines it, there is capitalism only if there is an industry and (or) an agriculture employing wage-earning workers, and all other categories of work (freelance workers, slaves) are excluded from capitalist-style economy.If it is an accumulation mode, it involves all modes of production based on investment and turnover of capital. What are the "statics" and what are the "dynamics"? RK
Re: Re: reform and rev
--- Message Received --- From: Carrol Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 18 Jan 2002 19:54:53 -0600 Subject: [PEN-L:21620] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: reform and rev Carrol I like your thinking here but you probably will not like my addition to it. Carrol: "If I had to guess, I would say that the bulk of the support for the revolution was not socialist but that aspect of it expressed in Mao's first speech on Tenyan (w?) Square: China has stood up. There was a socialist streak there, and I still regard Mao as a major Marxist thinker that we can learn from if we abstract correctly, but the essential drive was Chinese patriotism." Not only the nature of the support but also the whole nature of what was in fact historically possible. I rate the Chinese revolution a great success, but not for the socialism that it achieved, but for the very situation that China now finds itself (oddly enough). My superficial understanding of the history of China does not give this important place a lot of choice in what needed to be done. No Chinese revolution would have been inconcievable, China would have developed into warring states, mass never-ending famine, and the people into virtual slaves of capital and the most reactionary landlords. Whatever troubles now beset it, China has stood up and a significant proportion of humankind have a better basis for a real future then they would have had under any other imagined circumstances. In this both the "mistakes" of the past (recent and further back) at least take place within a country with a significant working class and a modern infrastructure which however ill developed is at least present. The proletarianisation of China (still with a large peasant population) despite all that has happened is a mark of its historical success as a revolution. The socialist road of China could never have been and in my understand is not presently anything other then state-capitalism taking on a rather impossible task and achieving much of it. The character of the state, derived from Chinese history has also developed because of this. At this point of time the very process of China standing up has exhausted the possiblities of its birth. The problems it is now faced with exceed the ability of this country to continue down the path which got it to this point in the first place. Where is the future of China, well to put no gloss on this questioin at all, it is in its integration with world capitalism where new contradictions will arise and a new struggles emerge. At least China now is able to participate in this as a viable state, this would have been denied them if history had not taken the course it did. The Chinese revolution was a necessity, but if the good things about are not to be washed away altogether it is up to us outside China to wrought those changes that can produce a better world. China's CP, state and society in general, does not have at this moment the resources to do otherwise than it is, its position is peculiar and derives from the particular role the state has played in the past and is quite incapable of playing any longer. If the state and all that this presently entails collapses China will be a mess, however the state in order to maintain itself is also caught up in the contradictions of capital (from which it never was free), meanwhile the working class finds itself in struggle against the state and capital and is all too aware of the peculiar position China is in at the moment. If international state to state relations could become more "civilisied" the Chinese state would have more room for development, if the world economy could be forced to encounter the world working class as an emerging power, the workers of China would find more room to move. It is not that China is socialist that is the question, but how China typifies the condition of the world as a whole (as it should seeing one third of humanity lies within its borders). China is not a question which calls for any singular views on what should and can be done, rather it points to the criticial importance of internationalism as a focus of struggle and the role that states and the working class must play in this. The disintegration of China (real possiblity) would make the dissolution of the USSR look like a minor hiccup. If one third of human kind is faced with barbarianism, the rest may not be too far behind. China is our barometer of world social health, and it is a contradictory one. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: GLOBALIZATION, STATE FAILURE AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT: IMPERIALISM? ...
I took this rather dense paragraph from http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/CGPE/conference/papers/radice.pdf GLOBALIZATION, STATE FAILURE AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT: IMPERIALISM? by Hugo Radice. It is an observation which is important at it touches on some critical aspects - especially important is his last sentence, which I would apply much more widely then he does and reflect it back on conditions in the North where the position of unions as they are now composed also fall into the same contradictions despite the logic of concentration he uses. "Yet if socialism can no longer take advantage of the immediately mass character of capitalist production and consumption, the consequence is that the appreciation of common interests takes on a more complex, subtle, but more politically educational character. Within the single giant factory, the common interest of workers is based upon the apparently economic employment relation. This has a self-evident class character, based on both the exchange of labour-power for wages, and the direct subordination of labour in the workplace. Yet the political foundations of that class relation are rendered opaque by the boundaries of the invidual workplaces, and the pressures of competition between them: hence the long struggle for the formation of national unions, aiming to prevent the pitting of workers against each other; but hence too the honey traps of sectoral corporatism, and the reinvention of capitalist domination through the exigencies of international competition. Now i! n todays transnationalised, disintegrated and outsourced network capitalism -even making due allowance for the vacuous hyping of these trends by people who ought to know better - capitalists have learnt not to provide a ready material base for collective opposition. But they find that it reemerges around issues, and in forms and in places, where it is not so easily contained. If traditional labour movements, once recognised as social partners, could be sedated and their leaderships tamed by mixtures of paternalism and material advance, our rulers now find it more difficult to head off social movements that reject hierarchy and demand not more but different. In addition, if low-skill mass assembly work is transferred increasingly to the imperial peripheries, we get the growth of classic labour movements, but without the sophisticated liberal-democratic competition state that can guide their transformation into the kind of tame business unions that increasingly ! govern Northern organized labour." --- Message Received --- From: Michael Pugliese <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: pen-l <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 08:04:17 -0800 Subject: [PEN-L:21528] GLOBALIZATION, STATE FAILURE AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT: IMPERIALISM? ... GLOBALIZATION, STATE FAILURE AND UNDERDEVELOPMENT: IMPERIALISM? ... ... both Marxist (Bukharin, Hilferding, Kautsky, Lenin, Luxemburg ... links between that current conjuncture and broader ... struggles of and against Stalinism, though the ... http://www.sussex.ac.uk/Units/CGPE/conference/papers/radice.pdf
Re: Re: social democracy
Paul Phillips: "I further agree that the prospects of SD taming the excesses of capitalism have been reduced, if not fatally wounded, by "globalism" and the legal institutions of globalism that, in effect, outlaw social democratic reforms." I have not been following the thread well enough to criticise any views but this is an important point. You see it also turns back on itself and provides a basis of critique of communist politics. That is historically the communist left has become dependant on Social Democracy in order to define its politics. When Social Democracy dissappeared, the communists found themselves in a never-world. Times have changed radically, the old rules no longer hold. Note also that reforms, no matter how modest or sensible are not welcomed by capital today, reform has much more of an edge to it then it did before. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 10:54:02 -0600 Subject: [PEN-L:21531] Re: social democracy
Re: Imperialism: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis? Radical History Review Roundtable
Michael bless your cotton socks for the addrss below. I have been trying to argue something similar and thought I was totally alone on this intellectually. But there is is, I have only skimmed so far but I am already gob-smacked!!! Thanks! Thanks! and Thanks again! THE ADDRESS AGAIN http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/special.htm Micahel's has appended the contents list below. Whare do you find such things! amazed and grateful - you have made me very happy. I don't know what conclusions the authors draw but they discussed it seriously and in 1992! Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Michael Pugliese <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2002 18:44:33 -0800 Subject: [PEN-L:21455] Imperialism: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis? Radical History Review Roundtable Special Sectiion-Imperialism Roundtable Imperialism: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis? Selections from RHR 57. Roundtable Contents: ... http://chnm.gmu.edu/rhr/special.htm Selections from RHR 57 Roundtable Contents: Introduction Van Gosse The Age of Ultraimperialism Carl Parrini Capitalism and the Periodization of International Relations: Colonialism, Imperialism, Ultraimperialism, and Postimperialism Keith Haynes Ne Plus Ultra Imperialism Marilyn B. Young Imperialism: Historical Periodization or Present-Day Phenomenon? Linda Carty Global Realm with No Limit with No Name Bruce Cumings The Displacement of Tension to the Tension of Displacement Prasnetjit Duara Concerning the Question: Is Imperialism: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis? Michael Geyer Addressing the Questions E.J. Hobsbawm Comments on Imperialism Harry Magdoff Response to the Roundtable Emily S. Rosenberg
Re: Imperialism and "Empire" (by John Bellamy Foster)
the familar trail, the fact is our own history shows that we have been left well behind. It is this fact, rather than just some idele contemplation on the grand questions which is the practical motive to contemplate these grand questions, and when these are posed as questions rather than answers politically another direction starts to emerge. "Of course, in the end there is the ultimate question of method, from the little I know, H and N have little of that..." True enough and I agree, methodologically they are a complete mess... ", Meszaros is a logician and a good one from what I hear. In the classes he taught, he emphasises the concept of mediation, likes to say to students where is the mediation, which brings me back to our last conversation about reform, or how does reform in the centre mediate the working class divide with the periphery? If does not, then the national question may be allowing one working class to kill another." First I would suggest that the centre is dissolving, that is the centre as a collection nation states in the social and political sense. The centre has become a handful of cosmopolitian cities which the state almost seems to hang-off. Now I do not make light of the enornmous differences between the periphery as in Indonsesia as against what is becoming an internal periphery within the US. We need not conflate the two to also acknowledge that the US (or Australia for that matter) almost appear to be breaking up at the economic level, whereas previously we could see a spreading prosperity in such states. How far this goes, I honestly do not know. What I am aware of is that the room that use to exist for grand guestures of reform (which is how I would describe the majority of reformist reforms) simply seems to have disappeared in these states. Reformists have ceased to exist, they do not even try and foster enough class struggle even to sustain their own positions, for the most part they have become just softer conservatives. In Australia this is most apparent, perhaps because we have had such a long reformist/union based history. This whole side of politics has just collapsed in on itself - the international bourgeoisie does not give a bugger about them, so they prostitute themselves shamelessly. Much of the internal dynamics have diasspeared, where the socialist movement acted as the stimulus and bogey for the reformists (an essential part of the old system despite their protests of revolutionary purity). In this context old politics just don't make any sense. Propaganda, educational roles without even a spark of conflict become just whistling in the wind. The left here has just become a religious cult, the only signs of life being the anti-globalisation protests dominanted by the least sophistociated and most passionate. Hakki I am stating this not as some great rebuttal to your fears but as an honest appriasal of our position. In short, if I was to make my strongest argument it would simply be that nothing but practical reforms remains. Of course I could put this in a theortitical context, but I don't really know if that is required. The fundemental fact seems to me that we have been left stranded. Yes national struggles could lead to past errors, but I believe the foundations of this condition has passed. Secondly, I cannot concieve of an international democratic order that is not based on democratisied nation states at least in the first instance. For those of us that live in nominally democratic systems, the struggle is pass out of these constraints, elsewhere it might be a much hotter struggle even to get to the point of democratic reforms. Thirdly, no other class except the working class has an immediate interest in such reforms, other classes may benefit (will benefit no-doubt) but other interests close in, social leadership has become a primary question the proof of which lies all about us. Perhaps the surest course is that imposed on us, any other seems to point towards nothing at all. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: Imperialism and "Empire" (by John Bellamy Foster)
likely. US Global Hegemony is not an option, a world ruled by a rogue state is not the world I want to give my children. Comrades will have to make up their mind that this is not a continuation of what we have known and that re-adjusting our vision is the first task of many. "I agree with you right up to the bit about Meszaros, Greg - his 4th, 5th and 6th contradictions, and the hegemon's response to their bite, marks Bush's presidency, for mine. Yes, a consciously urgent integrated policy of hegemonic restructuration and consolidation is under way - Mark Jones calls our moment 'world-historic' and I agree with him." I may be reading the wrong meaning into this, but there is a disagreement - no matter how the US juggles it cannot restructure. For it to remain hegemonic it must also clash with the international socialisation of capital, the contradiction for this bourgeoisie is that despite its wealth and power it is politically and culturally weak, it can become courtiers to the mighty US state or it can break with that state towards a more social form of international intercourse. In the former case it hitches its wagon to a team of uncontrolled blackgaurds, in the latter we might all breath a sigh of relief. My problem is that such a break, needs social force behind it, far more than the most enlightened bourgeoisie can muster. Not creating such a force could make the nightmare permanent and distintigration inevitable (other societies have collapsed and Marx was clear enough in his warnings). Of course such a force would move past bourgeois interests, but not necessarily directly against them and this is another area where we, the left, seem unable to comprehend, that contraidctions are not reducible to simple formulas but expand outwards into complexity and in this lies the political room to move for the underclass. One way of reading the current period which I reject, is that it is determined by imperialistic contradictions alone. The character of the present period is definitely shaped by these old imperialistic contradictions (an apt description of the US). But the essence of our period lies in the contrary contradictions (the Kautskian) being in conflict with the older Orwellian trend and the key remaining the Leninist class element. "Desperate military and diplomatic attempts to cover the hegemon's loss of economic competitiveness, to wrest control over the world's diminishing energy reserves and sectors of extant effective demand, to commodify information and control its economic exploitation, and to persist in social and environmental destruction such that the absolute economic advantages in the benighted world to come accrue to the hegemon. That's how I'm seeing my children's world just now. An international state of artifice in which the lives of nations and people alike are solitary brutish and short ..." The battle has in a sense not now between capitalism and a socialist alternative, but proletarian socialism as the only viable future. What is becoming apparent to me is that whereas in the past this was an abstract question, today it is a realistic one. We must begin acting like leader's of society as a whole, pay attention to what can be fixed, actually change conditions when and where we can, and place before society proletarain interests as the interests of the whole society, as a demonstrated fact rather then an imaginary virtue. This means a major break with our own past, a major rethink of our traditions and restoration of Marxism (please note I mean restoration, not sloppy additions and extensions). Rob, it is said that prayer has a classic structure, which begins by first expressing the deepest fears and despair and from within these is found some glimmer of light which is kindled into a flame of enlightnement. I do not suggest we pray, but I do suggest we are unlikely to recieve any real wisdom without going through this process. My problem with those that write the present period in the light of the familar past, is that there is an assumption that we will return to the norm, that things could not get worse than what we have known and that somehow capitalism will remain capitalism until socialism comes skipping through the front door. Modes of Production don't last forever, societies which exhaust themselves take on characteritics of pointless violence and self-inflicted woes which all too well remind me of the present state of affairs. Brutality in order to gain an objective is one thing, brutality with no objectives is another - as the US rips up the Geneva Convention, plans new wars when old ones have not ended, fights by proxy and from afar to give itself what - Afgahistan! for christ's sake, an oil pipeline could have been had for bribes to tribal heads paid for by the costs of just one bombing run. Sorry Rob, I let myself go not because I disagreed with you but because I agree with you too well. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: Re: Imperialism and "Empire" (by John Bellamy Foster)
--- Message Received --- From: ALI KADRI <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 4 Dec 2001 08:13:35 -0800 (PST) Subject: [PEN-L:20322] Re: Imperialism and "Empire" (by John Bellamy Foster) "This time around they really did it to hardt and negri; H and N might go back to teaching literature and leave social science alone. I thought it was very well done with M My dear Hakki, this is a bit of desperate refutation. The original review merely contrasted two different approaches to the present period. The review author clearly likes Meszaros and rejects Empire, having not read the former I do not know if it even attempts to refute the main thesis of Empire. The points outlined in the review attributed to Meszaros seem all very substantial bar one: "Imperialism, he says, can be divided into three distinct historical phases: (1) early modern colonialism, (2) the classic phase of imperialism as depicted by Lenin, and (3) global hegemonic imperialism, with the U.S. as its dominant force. " The points one to three can be rendered more abstractly as 1)proto-imperialism 2)imperialism 3)post-imperialism. Please take note that Meszaros correctly notes as does Empire, that we are past classic imperialism as described by Lenin - this is the criticial point. Now the question is whether US Global Hegemonic Imperialism is a contingent and passing episode or the logical end product of capital's socialisation. What is Global Hegemonic Imperialism, except Super-Imperialism (Lenin/Kaustky) or Empire (Negi/Hardt)? At this level (and based only on the review) Meszaros analaysis seems to support the general concept of Empire. Is there a necessity in history that such a force should be a single state? Or does the movement of history push past this and the present deperate actions of the US represent a last gasp (which could well last many bloody years) of a state struggling not to be surpassed? I go for the latter being more compatible to theory in general and observable history. Bush has been pugnacious since his first day, has everyone forgotten his tearing up of treaties, and his growing agrression (with no provocation) against China. The US was looking for a fight long before S11 and no-one seems to be askling why. Is this another act of Imperialism as we know it, the assumption it seems of our entire movement? Meszaros seems to be saying no and Empire says no (ie via the logic of their positions regardless of the opinions of the authors). This present struggle by the US state where it has strained all its alliances, and unleashed grand forces against a tiny country, has gone out of its way to repudiate humanitarian treaties and global governance at any level makes more sense as a blind and furious statement in blood of the USA's right to take, and forever take, unilateral actions as it sees fit (the purpose being a mere excuse to demonstrate this single and important principle). Whatever, Empire got wrong (and what can I say but there is a lot wrong when the level of abstraction dances so grandly) it got its central thesis right and despite Meszaros' opinion he seems to be offering yet more proof that this is so. Did not Lenin use bourgeois and other faulted authors to construct his concept of Imperialism, it seems odd that by beingg faulted we should use this as an excuse not to construct a clear picture of post-imperialism now. This seems to be what we are doing, grasping at straws not to take on the challenge of understanding our period for what it is. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: RE: Re: Relative and absolute surplus value
Jim on further thought I believe I am mistaken and you were right: in saying: "I was simply applying an abstract theory to the concrete reality (white-collar vs. blue-collar workers, etc.) As my presentation shows, the abstract theory doesn't apply exactly when applied to a specific situation." The other important matter is to do with productive forces when you say: "Even if the "best practice" equipment isn't introduced into a low-wage area, introducing an "antiquated" technique there will in many cases raise labor productivity there. " In classic imperialism where the export of capital lead to productivity increases in "unnderdeveloped" economies, there was an absolute increase of productivity as productivity in the homeland state was well protected and the cheap-labour rarely came into anything like direct competition with homeland labour. I spoke about the destruction of productive powers becuase the two labour sources have come more or less into direct competition. Hence a shift from "best practice" in a homeland state generally means introducing more aniquated techniques in the new place. In a global context the productive powers are reduced. In a sense the defeat of the working class in the old homelands was achieved by this shift whereby "cheap" labour elsewhere became direct competitors. The effect is to also cheapen labour in this old homelands and thus slow the pressure of introducing more advanced forms of dead labour there also. This shift which has become a pronounced tendency and we are in a bind with class struggle, the international aspects of which are no-where developed enough to overcome this type of division. Hence the need to provide some political framework for political struggle on economic issues. I cannot see any quick cures but there are historical and material reasons why we have to break with the past and explore new regions. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 27 Nov 2001 09:04:30 -0800 Subject: [PEN-L:20027] RE: Re: Relative and absolute surplus value Greg Schofield writes: >... I would not be so free and easy with testing Marx's abstract essence of capital against "empirical" evidence...< I wasn't "testing" Marx's theory. Instead, I was simply applying an abstract theory to the concrete reality (white-collar vs. blue-collar workers, etc.) As my presentation shows, the abstract theory doesn't apply exactly when applied to a specific situation. But if we can't apply the theory to understand concrete reality, what's the point of it? >Your original point is absolutely valid, there has been a great switch away from productivity to less productive but more lucrative intensification of living labour. Part and parcel of the historical defeats of the working class in these changing globbal conditions.< I was simply refering to a "switch" that seems to be part of the current business cycle. But it also applies globally: if low-wage workers are available in, say, China, then there's little point in applying "best practice" technology. Low wages are a substitute for technological change that raises labor's productivity. However, such technical change occurs anyway, given the government (and private-sector) investment in its promotion. >The level of abstraction of absolute and relative surplus extraction informs analysis rather than directly translates, but the point remains valid - the relative destruction of productive powers.< I was using those concepts to "inform" rather than directly translating. But I don't think the "destruction of productive powers" is what I was talking about. Rather it was the non-development of productive powers. However, it's possible that some "technically advanced" plant has been wiped out in the competitive battle by low-wage plant... >Now I can readily be accused of the utmost simplicity in this, but the progressive effects of worker's economic struggle leads directly to a rise in dead labour [i.e. mechanization and the like] within the productive process. Bourgeois success, in effect, retards this specific development - in fact it distorts and destroys some of its underpinnings - other aspects, such as the spread of production into "cheap labour" basins has more more welcomed immediate effects, but again the logic catches up with the system. >"Cheap labour" held cheap (economic struggle held in check), leads to an introduction of new machines into areas that previously lacked them, but the overall power to produce is reduced as this is a realitive move to divest of just such devices and more elsewhere - the ov
Re: Relative and absolute surplus value
James thanks for this clear statement below, though I would not be so free and easy with testing Marx's abstract essence of capital against "empirical" evidence, but that is a very small cheese. Your original point is absolutely valid, there has been a great switch away from productivity to less productive but more lucrative intensification of living labour. Part and parcel of the historical defeats of the working class in these changing globbal conditions. The level of abstraction of absolute and relative surplus extraction informs analysis rather than directly translates, but the point remains valid - the relative destruction of productive powers. Now I can readily be accused of the utmost simplicity in this, but the progressive effects of worker's economic struggle leads directly to a rise in dead labour within the productive process. Bourgeois success, in effect, retards this specific development - in fact it distorts and destroys some of its underpinnings - other aspects, such as the spread of production into "cheap labour" basins has more more welcomed immediate effects, but again the logic catches up with the system. "Cheap labour" held cheap (economic struggle held in check), leads to an introduction of new machines into areas that previously lacked them, but the overall power to produce is reduced as this is a realitive move to divest of just such devices and more elsewhere - the overall investment in "labour saving devices" declines. At the other end this conflict of the relations of production with the power of production manifests itself in large amounts of capital being sucked away from production as a whole, while the process itself looks like new investment its overall effect is divestment. The less pressure on the bourgeoisie from economic struggle, the more it departs from any form of progressive attainment in productive capacity, even when the overall amount of production of goods may have risen dramatically (I don't think this is the case, but "new" markets may engender more products, alas not with a comserate rise in productive increases). Again I may be whistling in the wind, but if economists could supply more of a reason for economic struggle and something of a practical direction for it, I believe this will be well recieved in an atmosphere where any struggle for improvement is immediately labeled counter-productive to the social enterprise. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: "Devine, James" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 15:34:19 -0800 Subject: [PEN-L:19995] RE: Relative and absolute surplus value I wrote: >>> ... The businesses have switched from relative surplus-value extraction (technical progress, mechanization) to absolute surplus-value extraction (wage cuts, speed-up, stretch-out) as the main mode. ...<<< Michael Perelman wrote: >>Wage cuts are part of relative s.v., but you are right about the imbalance. ...<< Charles Brown writes:> Just a small technical note. I understand absolute surplus-value as obtained by lengthening the work day. Overtime seems to being cut back now.< When Marx discussed these issues, he was dealing with the simple situation when workers were paid by the day (which was quite relevant at the time). In that case, stretching out the length of the work-day (perhaps by shortening breaks) means that the hours of work-time per dollar of pay falls. This raises the rate of surplus-value (total profits/total wage bill), as Marx argues. Nowadays, blue-collar workers are mostly paid by the hour, usually with some higher rate for over-time (though there are exceptions), such as time and a half for overtime. A longer work-day may thus not raise the rate of surplus-value, since the wage paid per hour rises (or at least stays constant). The exception is if the boss cheated (i.e., has workers work without pay). This "cheating" seems the _norm_ these days for white-collar (salaried) workers, who are paid by the year or the month or the week and have to fulfill specific responsibilities: more responsibility is piled on the salaried workers, without increasing their pay. (This coincides with the laying-off of the salaried workers with less seniority or less clout with the boss or whatever.) Return to the waged (blue-collar or pink-collar) workers: if OT is cut back, this may help the rate of surplus-value, if the wage paid per hour falls (since OT pay isn't being paid anymore). This can coincide with _greater _ work-time for the salaried employees. I think this is what's happening right now, though I don't have the evidence at hand. >Speed up and other productivity increases would be relative surplus value extraction,no?< When Marx discussed these issues, he assume
Re: Max tells the "truth"
>From Michael Perelman: "First of all, this sort of exchange has no place here." "Second, this particular debate seems to involve Max vs. the others. When we reach that stage, especially when it becomes repetitive, it is time to stop." I agree and I wish I had not responded in the first place. In my own defense I would simply state that my final sentence: "Sorry Max but I have found your attitude beyond the pale or reasonable discourse." Is in fact an apology for the dismmissive tone of my own reply. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Michael Perelman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 09:59:44 -0800 Subject: [PEN-L:19957] Re: RE: Re: Max tells the "truth"
Shouldn't PEN-L members be working furiously to craft economic political rhetoric even more radical
Ali you make a very lucid point, but perhaps the question is how to make the iron hot. I think Charles found the fact that, I assume, non-marxist, probably simple liberal economists, are saying such things show that there exists a yawning gulf between social experience and political expression. He will correct me if I am wrong, but I would suppose that rather than simply advocating such solutions he is using them to illustrate the silence of the left. Such solutions are, as you rightly point out, useless, hardly capable of being implemented even if they did capture the popular imagination (which would stand-up well as a definition of poularism). However, surely there is much more that a knowledge of the economy can contribute then grand and unworkable solutions. Simply taking the economy as it now is and suggesting simple and straightforward solutions to general problems is something from which activity can congeal and help heat the iron for the striking? If economists do not attempt this who will? And if it is not attempted will not all the potential energy for struggle be wisped-away in pie-in-the-sky solutions? economic matters bite deep in the social consciousness, all aspects of life are forced to limbo below economic thresholds imposed by the powerful, unless we can feel that we can actually have some power over redirecting that force - all is lost. I cannot speak for all workers, but I can at least for some who feel completely without defense whenever "the economy" comes into the picture, "the economy" that their bosses' command. Full and meaningful solutions are not for our times, partial and practical ones should therefore not be despised, and great caution should be used whenever grand solutions are proposed (your well stated warning), but we do need to move within our moment, not hold back until better times (your implied solution) or pretend that things are otherwise than they are and we occupy some more important plane than we do in fact occupy (the general left position). A rout is only a rout until some practically defensibale ground is found and held as a ralling point - we need to find such ground and the way the world is going - we need to do so quickly. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: ALI KADRI <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 07:58:01 -0800 (PST) Subject: [PEN-L:19930] Re: Shouldn't PEN-L members be working furiously to craft economic political rhetoric even more radical LONG AGO the theme was taking the university back to the people, now it may be time to bring the people back to universities. Both will be better off, for people need a bit intellectual leisure and universities need a shot of realism. I do not think that there is a relative theoretical cohesion on the list to devise an ideological program. Not that this is bad or good. It is just that. And I do not think that the differences are between ultra left, humanist, althusarian or Hegelian Marxist; they are between neo kantian empiricist, solopsist, and Marxist. In short there is no broad theoretical cohesion to provide a basis for an ideological program. Todays discussion was that the left lost influence because it lost, some two decades ago, the battle over language, its conceptions went out and the right wing conceptions commandeered the shaping of the intellectual environment. Then the question becomes is it ever possible for the left with the use of malleable and probably populist language to infiltrate the intellectutal debate or is the allowable language under capitalism is that which downgrades the language of class struggle to that which is harmless to the bourgeoisie. So let us presume just for the sake of exercise that pen l issues a ten point program for recovery which begins with bringing financial institutions under democratic control and let us say ends with narrowing the profit margin of industry for more jobs or some measure of guaranteeing employment etc. Something reformist, in that, it does not call for outright nationalization. What headway will such a program make. I bet you nothing, and nothing begets nothing. The prognosis may be that: there is a crisis of a working class ideology and party and probably it is not just the language of the left that is outlawed but everything else to do with it. Kowtowing a populist arrangement may simply imply moving in the allowable margin. Strike when the iron is hot. --- Charles Brown <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Shouldn't PEN-L members be working furiously to > craft economic political rhetoric even more radical > than Stiglitz and Krugman ? > > > Renowned U.S. Economists Denounce Corporate-Led > Globalization > by Charles Brown > 26 November 2001 01:29 UTC < < < > Thread Index > > > > > > Renowned U.S. Economists Denounce Corporate
Re: Max tells the "truth"
Sorry Max I have read a few of your statements and could not disagree more. Jim below makes one side of an argument I am generally in agreement with. I will make another which probably not many will agree with but nevertheless needs to be said. I am no pacifist, far from it, but I am no lover of massacre, torture and death. When the left in some part of world is in armed struggle I dispair at the inevitable crimes against humanity which erupt in any war but especially in civil war - I do not condone it, in a similar position I would hope that I had the courage to stop it (the crimes not the pursuance of a such war). War is bad enough at the best of times, war bereft of the rules of war is a nightmare I would wish inflicted on no class of person - however much I might hate them. When the most powerful nation on earth flouts the rules of war, does so without outcry we have collectively entered the valley of death and no-one walks beside us. That this is excused under any pretext of intellectual argument is simply not decent by any standards to which thinking human beings adhere. Star chamber executions of prisoners! A beligerant power not interested in negiotating a surrender, proclaiming that it was in no position to take prisoners is a return to the worst excesses of war. The US is sowing the wind and no one is doing any favours to it, or the world, by excusing it. The US has every chance of resolving this thing through civilisied means, it disregarded this. The US pursued a policy of war, unfortunately this remains the priviledge of nations. To do so and diregard the rules of war is a criminal act which makes S11 pallour into insignificance - terrorism is the whirlwind and there is much much more to fear in the valley of death than there was before. The Taliban are for the most part poor (incredibly poor by our standards) peasants who it must remember were for all its brutality a definite improvement on the forces now backed by the US. If they made Afganistan worse, then we must ask worse than what, certianly better than what immediately proceeded and just as certainly much worse than the regime the US set out to topple those many years ago. The great superpower is reeking revenge on what? A collection of poor peasants, however misled, who tried to put their little part of the world to rights in the light of their own poor understanding. The arrogance of passing judgement on them, especially such a god-like absolutism is not a pretty thing, nor a compassionate one. If the world had truly cared about Afghanistan it would have been a help to it long before this, it is a sorry business and a shameful episode that we now pass through and does no honour to those killed in S11 or anywhere else. News tonight was that US forces have finally made a ground appearance, they will be young people, ignorant and enmeshed in a machine not of their own making. I do not say it lightly but the best thing that could happen at this point of time is a small but significant US defeat, it may be unlikely but perhaps if it did happen in front of the cameras of the world we might dismount the beast and as a community find some better way out of this mess (if nothing else I hope this proves I am no pacifist) Sorry Max but I have found your attitude beyond the pale or reasonable discourse. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 14:51:50 + Subject: [PEN-L:19923] Max tells the "truth" [was: RE:[PEN-L:19912] RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Doug tells thetruth..] Max Sawicki writes: >Now let us all bow our heads in a moment of silence over the impending demise of several thousand fascist, anti-semitic, misogynist terrorists. (One suspects they are not down with the GBLTGTS [] thing either.)< the Taliban can't be "anti-semitic," since they are semites themselves. I would call them anti-Jewish bigots, though they are also anti-Christian and anti-Buddhist, to name a few antis. They _are_ fascist, if one uses the word loosely. The Taliban clearly consists of a bunch of bad guys. But I've never seen actual proof that the person they allegedly harbor -- Osama bin Laden -- or his alleged organization -- al Qaeda -- did the dirty deed. Nor is capital punishment (in the form of a US war and strategic bombing) justified for harboring alleged criminals. And as for the Taliban's admittedly disgusting policies, if it was good for the world for the US to indiscriminately attack countries that fail to pass the moral muster, why hasn't the US bombed civilians in Burma? in Saudi Arabia? and who made the US the world cop, judge, jury, and executioner? or is the word "vigilante"? Max complains that people on pen-l are selective pacifists, criticizing the US but not other countries when they commit atrocities like the war
Re: Shouldn't PEN-L members be working furiously to craft economic political rhetoric even more radical
Here! Here! Charles CB: "Shouldn't PEN-L members be working furiously to craft economic political rhetoric even more radical than Stiglitz and Krugman ?" Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Mon, 26 Nov 2001 09:33:21 -0500 Subject: [PEN-L:19921] Shouldn't PEN-L members be working furiously to craft economic political rhetoric even more radical
Re: Re: he market [Socialism Now}
ot promise any real future as we move towards tribute extraction as a major relation of production (echoes of Marx on the Asiatic mode of production). My clumsy introduction of the importance of non-productive labour is that it is an indicator of things going off-the-rails based on the observation that cut-backs in productive labour (cost saving and "higher" productivity) seem to go hand in hand with expansions of non-productive labour (managerial, accountancy, capital services and of course marketing in all its varied forms - whether in-house or out-sourced). Not that I have made the subject matter any clearer by this post I fear. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wed, 21 Nov 2001 07:16:37 + Subject: [PEN-L:19731] Re: he market [Socialism Now} At 19/11/01 15:38 +0800, Greg wrote: >This has become so common that the real difficulty is seeing the >market-governor determining the socially necessary labour in these >exchanges - rather what we are seeing is the result of planning. The >question posed by a particular rate of exchange dwell more on the plans of >the major players (takeover as against out-sourcing, diversification as >against core business, and risk management strategies), then the displine >of market buying and selling. While I am sympathetic to Greg's overall approach I wonder if these formulations do not require a bit more discussion. There is no reason why reality should conform to the ideas of Marx but it would be interesting if they do not. I am not sure that the "market-governor" determines the socially necessary labour time. Rather it helps the price of commodities equilbrate around their socially necessary labour time. I am not quite sure about the concept of the discipline of market, except in so far as all commodities imply exchange and a question of how that exchange is tested. I wonder if it is the rate of exchange that dwells more on the plans of the major players or that the major players are able through unequal competition to determine the prevailing means of production for the commodity in question. Greg has already come back in the discussion and clarified that his remarks relate to the greatly diminshed and still diminishing free markets, rather than to all markets:- >Socialisation has lead to the elimination of certain markets and to the >close control of nearly all the others to the point where the concept of a >free market is negated. >The reduction of the role of the market leads inevitable to an expansion >of administration in order to compensate for its previous role >(accountants, manargerial controls, etc) and a greater and greater >emphasis placed on profit realisation (much of the so called service >industry) which boils down to a lot of energy placed in controlling the >market in order to render profits. > >Both tendencies lead to an explosion of non-productive labour (labour >which adds nothing to the actual products being sold but becomes essential >to finally sell them). I would caution against the danger of confusion in Marx about whether productive labour is labour that produces surplus value, or labour that produces a concrete use value. A lot of secondary organisational work can be done in regulating markets that can yield surplus value. Indeed stock exchanges are now often launched on the stock exchange themselves. There is also a fundamental question about the nature of commodities, that does not affect the general thrust of Greg's argument at all but might I suggest misdirect the focus of criticism. >In a sense some of this can be seen in the consumer market where labling >and "services" almost become the commodity while the actual product seems >to come a poor second. My comment on this is to go back to the actual second footnote in Capital that approvingly quotes Nicholas Barbon saying that the greatest number of things have their value from supplying the wants of the mind." Over 130 years after Capital Vol I it is even more the case that most commodities in prosperous capitalist markets supply the needs of the fancy rather than the strictly material needs of the stomach. I hope these points are more than quibbles and help explore the main direction of your arguments, Greg. Like you, I would stress the high degree of socialisation of late capitalism. But whereas the assumptions about socialism used to be about having large monopolies under state control, I see the ripeness of late capitalism as being in the increasingly subtle ways in which the absolute private ownership of capital is restricted and subsumed. For example Gordon Brown's Financial Services Authority presiding over large investing institutions like pension funds and insurance companies, which are alrea
Re: The (post-) market [Socialism Now}
Eeek! not only post-modernist, but the end of history. I think I have really overstated what I meant to say. Sorry Charles, I apprieicate what you have said very much, but I better qualify myself a little more. Regulated markets are now the norm, regulated that is by monopolistic plans, free markets were an expression of individual private capital, abuses did frequently occur (price fixing etc) but the bourgeoisie as a whole had real reason to make sure that markets functioned freely as possible. What was previously an abuse is now the practical norm, which is a significant point in the socialisation of the means of distribution. The anarchic traits of the free market are not tolerated by the present ruling class in any important areas. Yet the left for the most part puts up "planning" as the answer to this historically non-existant problem. In essense the bourgeoisie face the same problems with implementing their plans as a proletariat would in socialism (different plans of course). Bourgeois plans stem from the history of the property form, the fact they implement plans does not make them any more humane or anymore safe from crisis (like the old USSR the crisis bubbles up and disrupts the best and most sophisticated of plans), indeed the excessive amount of planning effecting the economy probably stokes the fires of eventual economic crisis (a speculative observation). For us it is not sufficient to argue for economic planning as has been the case in the past, indeed one criticism of the present is that the great plans of the super-monopolies over-reach themselves and cripple important aspects of production (relations of production coming into conflict with productive powers - often seen as over-managed production). The real question is what sort of plan for what objectives (the nuts and bolts), and ironically this may mean re-introducing regulated markets into areas that are now virtually market-less (the role of monopoly food distributors in Australia where the farmer's gate price is pushed below production costs, while the consumer price is held high - in remote aboriginal Australia this is a major cause for the health disaster which so afflicts such communities). Forgive this meandering but this thought brings me to your point "However , the last leap must be conscious not just objective." To make the subjective leap we on the left have to break well past political abstractions (such as markets "bad"; planning "good", which seems to typify our answers to any economic question) and start putting forward actual solutions around which struggle can congeal. Moreover, all around society there are individuals and organisations already struggling about such issues, so it is not just a matter of inventing demands, but finding them and recasting them into a greater political platform. It is at this point where we can do the most service - not getting every detail right but forming a political framework where such struggles can find their place. For the all-important leap of consciousness to take place, we need a conscious act of establishing general direction, not that all need to "belong" to this platform or even acknowledge it, but so sections can find a conscious expression of their particular struggle in a general concept - this is a contribution I think falls heavily on our shoulders - to provide the intellectual means of linking the specific to the general cause. In this it does not matter if what I have said about markets is primitive (which it is), but that in this area a great deal of work needs to be done - the question is no longer a choice of planning or markets, but which plans - the corporate bourgeois plans, or a yet to be created proletarian plan for economic development. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 20 Nov 2001 09:33:21 -0500 Subject: [PEN-L:19723] The (post-) market [Socialism Now} This is great. Not only are we in a post-modern period, but a post-market period. Not only is there an end of philosophy, ideology and history, but an end of the market. Your Leninist logic is impeccable. The international division of labor, globalized socialization of production, is overripe for social appropriation to replace private appropriation. The central contradiction of capitalism is 11 months pregnant with socialism. However , the last leap must be conscious not just objective.
Re: Socialism Now (the UN Charters)
I do not disagree with W.-Robert Needham on the progressive nature of much of the best that defines the UN. The UN, despite all things that can be said against it, stands as clarifying institution in many regards. One its primary charter derived from the real aspirations of the millions who suffered from WWII, it still resonants because it represents unfinished business. The other aspect when one considers many of the regimes involved in the UN, is that as improbable as it seems, good sense does seem to flow from such an internationalism and inspite of all its obvious limitations. I do not believe that we should trail after UN charters, but when they are so much in accord with social needs, it is a great pity they are not used more in the forefront of political struggles, rather than as dusty documents footnoted obscurely. One thing is for certain, we must struggle with what is on hand. The socialist movement casts itself into the role of an international, the UN occupies that capacity (warts and all) in historical reality. It seems straight-forward that we should treat the UN as the international state in emergance, but it has proved embarrassing to do so to an idealisied conception of interanationalism. The UN is certainly not the all-round-solution for all the difficult questions as some proponants suppose (that is not what is suggested in the post), nor is it some bouregois accessory which is ignored until its says something we like or does something we dislike (the defacto position of the movement). The thing is that if the UN did not exist we would be at the forefront of calling for it, the fact that it is not an ideal vehicle is not the issue, that it exists is important, that it needs revamping and reform is important, that its best decisions put most if not all its member states to shame is a contradiction which needs also to be pushed. If there is to be a workable political platform, then the role of the UN, criticism of its present position and propagation of its best decisions has to be the central hub of real internationalism. I doubt, there is a socialist platform in the world which makes such a conscession to the UN as such, yet its absense points to a deep-seated duplicity in our movement. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: "W.R. Needham" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 11:11:44 -0500 Subject: [PEN-L:19697] Re: Re: Re: Socialism Now Greg Scoflield has raised interesting issues. I am more pessimitic than he. But there are some optimistic predetermined milestones. If one defines a democratic socialist society as one moving in the direction of equality of citizenship and equality of human rights then, from the Declaration of Human Rights in 1948 [http://www.udhr.org/UDHR/default.htm] through to the various covenants (see below), there seems to have been international agreement (moral principle and legal status) on the progressive advance of human rights and to be achieved consistently, that is without backsliding. But it is notable that the United States, that one-time great leader in the advance of human rights is now a follower! One illustration serves. The Convention on the Rights of the Child was ratified or acceded to by 191 of 193 nations. There are two hold-outs, Somalia and the United States! [See Stephen Lewis, The Rise and Fall of Social Justice, http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/ECON/needhdata/Lewisprog.html ] What the hell goes on in that country? It does not bode well for the establishment of a full-democracy of human rights and the realization of Scofield's optimism. I should quickly note that people who live in glass houses should not throw stones. Canada's record has not been the most commendable. Indeed, filled with hypocrisy. [But see the commendable part of Canada's involvement with the creation of the Declaration http://arts.uwaterloo.ca/ECON/needhdata/humphreyref.html Neoliberalism and neoconservatism and the likes of Thatcher, Reagan and Mulroney have been consistent in backsliding on human rights. The organization "Low Income Familes Together" or LIFT,located in Toronto, had the temerity in 1998 to write a wonderful report titled The Ontario People's Report to the United Nations on Violations of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in the Province of Ontario. I understand that since then funds for LIFT have been difficult to obtain. See also: Bruce Porter, Social Rights and the Question of the Social Charter. Presentation to the Symposium on the Social Union, Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, September 18, 1998. http://www.equalityrights.org/cera/social.htm. I think Greg Schofield idea can be furthered by the academy if they/we first reflect and then act on the moral obligation outlined in the premable to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Following various important whereas s
Re: Socialism Now (Socialisation)
Socialisation and socialism with good reason are seen as similar propositions. The tendency within capital for the approrpriators to appropriate one another leads to greater and greater socialisation of production quite apart from the role that the working class may play politically. Class is the all important defining concept and despite all the immense socialisation that has occurred the ruling class remains unmistakably, even triumphantly, bourgeois. Socialism, proletarian socialism, has been for many the simple idea of planning replacing markets, a role thought to be reserved for one class - the proletariate. I hold however, this is a complete misreading of classic historical materialism, that its ancestory lies in the second International (and much further back - Saint Simon for instance) was for different reasons made into idol since 1917 and has carried forth in both the "Stalinist" and "Trotskist" traditions. As you said and I agree most people would assume that socialism is on par with the elimination of markets. Obviously the two are not disconnected, however, the objective of eliminating markets is not the centre piece it has been assumed to be. My argument that historically significant socialisation of production has already taken place and from this planning (corporate) has dominated free market limitations, merely underlines the historical difference between now and Marx's day and hopefully underscores the insufficiency of the present Socialist movement's pre-occupations. Ironically, as stated in my first reply, the conditions today (dominated by the corproate plan) could well mean that in certain areas it may be in the immediate interest of the working class to re-introduce some free markets to replace monopoly guild markets, just as in some areas where markets current operate (however dominated) it may also need to install planning measures. The key to proletarian socialism lies and has always resided, in first directing production in its interest. The first step is a class managing its own exploitation in order to further its interests as against being exploited in the interests of another class (there is of course a resolving contradiction in the first proposition which moves towards eliminating exploitation altogether). In a struggle to direct production no tools (markets, whatever) are barred by theory - the practical task of achieving such control determines what is useful (for instance NEP in the early USSR). To fetishise planning beyond the actual ability of control is to follow in the footsteps of the present bourgeoisie (excessive growth in non-productive labour), which ironically seems to be following in the steps of the late USSR. My attempts to point out the dimishing role of the free market, the dominance of corporate planning and the tremendous amount of socialisation carried out by the bourgeosie, is made in the effort to re-centre our concerns with raising a political platform which does articulate the immediate interests of the working class by taking into account the historical changes of the past century. It is our fetish with markets and command planning which, I believe, blinds us to raising practical measures through which the proletariat can begin to exercise its interests in directing production. In conclusion, markets (free or otherwise) act as a social governor on production today and will also act in a similar role under proletarian socialism, until this is dissolved into a future communism, that is capital labour, exchange-value, continue until they are replaced in practice by conscious production. Fred I hope this makes things clearer. My concern is that our concepts have become fixed on what is, in terms of today's world, mere anachronisms. The "free market" is all but gone, private capital has long been replaced by socialisied capital, it is our common illusion to deny both these developments, to talk politically as if classic capitalism was still the dominant form, unless this dream is dispelled it is our movement which politically cripples working class struggle. We are quite capable of studying modern capitalism and seeing the role and plans of super-monopolies, but politically we have become reductionist. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Frederick Guy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 08:12:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [PEN-L:19698] Re: Re: Socialism Now Just because companies have monopoly power and owe their power (property rights and all) to the state, doesn't mean that market mechanisms have become unimportant. Markets serve as a serious constraint on the choices open to the directors of almost any company. This is why I ask what you mean by 'socialism': to many, this means doing away with markets, and if this is what you mean I think you seriously underestimate the r
Re: Socialism Now
Actually Fred I owe you and others on the list an apology. I used the term market loosely, when I should have used the phrase "free market". The exchange of goods under any conditions is a market otherwise exchange-value could never be realisied. However, the "free market" where producers compete against one another for buyers and from which much of the classic dynamism of capitalism derived is all but dead. In some sense we have returned to the guild market conditions of the late middle ages. Socialisation has lead to the elimination of certain markets and to the close control of nearly all the others to the point where the concept of a free market is negated. Given the control of markets exerecised by monopolies, market forces appear as a crisis in profit realisation and for these major players a natural motivation for changing their planning. In a sense this was exactly the same as in Marx's day, the difference lies in the available solutions and the enormous distance between production and eventual profit relaisation. There are so many mediating levels that the role once occupied by the free market in regulating socially useful labour has now been exiled to the very periphery of production, what dominates labour is the corporate plan. The reduction of the role of the market leads inevitable to an expansion of administration in order to compensate for its previous role (accountants, manargerial controls, etc) and a greater and greater emphasis placed on profit realisation (much of the so called service industry) which boils down to a lot of energy placed in controlling the market in order to render profits. Both tendencies lead to an explosion of non-productive labour (labour which adds nothing to the actual products being sold but becomes essential to finally sell them). Against this backdrop the call of the socialist movement for more planning and less market influence is an anachronism. The point being the need to direct production for social needs and perhaps in areas this means it could be in the workers interest to re-introduce free markets in areas where monopolies dictate markets, just as much as to abolish some other forms of markets. I will try and reply to some of your other points in another posting (in order to keep things readable). Fred, I concede without qualification that the way of previously expressed the thought was inadequate and misleading, I hope the above does resolve some of the points you quite properly raised. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Frederick Guy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 08:12:59 -0800 (PST) Subject: [PEN-L:19698] Re: Re: Socialism Now Just because companies have monopoly power and owe their power (property rights and all) to the state, doesn't mean that market mechanisms have become unimportant. Markets serve as a serious constraint on the choices open to the directors of almost any company. This is why I ask what you mean by 'socialism': to many, this means doing away with markets, and if this is what you mean I think you seriously underestimate the role of markets in making the current system function, when you say that the current system is already substantially socialised. Fred
Re: The market [Socialism Now}
Sorry Chris I should be clearer than this. I am not saying that every kind of market is gone, classic markets exists albeit on a small scale. At one point or another profits must be realisied via exchange and that too is a market mechanism. However under classic capitalism the whole of the economy was animated by market exchanges (as per the nature of individual private capitals in intercourse). Monopoly capital internalisied such market exchanges into internal transactions, which strengthen its control over actual exchanges taking place elsewhere. In turn this strengthened position gives such leavage over existing markets they soon cease to exist as markets - the monopolies merely determining the rate of exchange. This has become so common that the real difficulty is seeing the market-governor determining the socially necessary labour in these exchanges - rather what we are seeing is the result of planning. The question posed by a particular rate of exchange dwell more on the plans of the major players (takeover as against out-sourcing, diversification as against core business, and risk management strategies), then the displine of market buying and selling. In a sense some of this can be seen in the consumer market where labling and "services" almost become the commodity while the actual product seems to come a poor second. The other more obvious attribute is the army of accountants needed to replace market operations, the immense amount of paper-work generated in order to keep track of all the elements and, of course, crisis appearing as a managerial attribute rather than direct market forces. In this there is no turning back the clock as the neo-liberals pretend (invariably leading to an explosion in paper-work and accountants). The chaos of the market (its actual governance of production) is well and truely pushed into the background - which is the essence of my point. The chaos we now enjoy is a coporate bureacratic one. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 06:55:24 + Subject: [PEN-L:19692] The market [Socialism Now} Greg, can you expand in what sense you mean this? Certainly it is clear in Marx that he described an essentially social process that appeared to be privately owned, and was treated legally as privately owned, thereby permitting the extraction of surplus value and the dynamics of uneven capitalist accumulation. He is clear that commodities existed long before the capitalist mode of production became dominant. So in what sense has the market *now* become all but extinct? Do you just mean that giant oligopolies have so much influence on demand and distribution that they effectively control it? Regards Chris
Re: Socialism Now
Fred you are right to be suspicious of my use of socialisation (see below) and as you have pointed out state capitalism has been written-off by the bourgeoisie in any meaningful sense. The two things are not unrelated. I have used socialisation in the sense that Lenin used the term in his works on Imperialism - a totally bourgeois form of socialation, but socialisation nonetheless. Insofar as monopolies and finance capital socialisied production leaving only the mode of acquistion in private hands, this too has now been socialisied through public companies (exceptions abound but the leading forms of capital have all taken this path). The means of production are mediated by the state through directors. When I said that this was not unrelated to the apparent fall of state-capitalism, it is because the bourgeoisie are now so dependant on the state that they must reduce it to a shadow of its former self in order to have the freedom to act as if the means of production is indeed their private property. >From this point of view the conversion of the state into a managerial enterprise and >the gutting, as is so obviously the case, of political life is a necessity of >bourgeois rule. I would also link this with the passing through of the stage of >Imperialism itself (another question but again not unrelated to the other two). The means by which the bourgeoisie have appropriated themselves and delivered socialisied ownership is not in a form we would have desired, the main reason why it has been missed by us - little surprise then that this aspect has been commented on by the likes of Galbraith and Harrington (though I do not know what has actually been said on this). If looked at from the aspect of the potential to direct the economy through a proletarianised state the first thing is to compare this to the conditions of Lenin and Marx. In their day political socialisation was an inescapable first step, today effective initial direction requires very little change (legal) but an enormous increase in overseeing (practical direction). One of the keys to this is the legal standing of the directors of companies. PS hand in hand with socialisation the market has become all but exitinct, though its form remains especially at the consumer end of things. The speculative market is perhaps the last hold out of market mechanisms, which of course is a parody of their former function (speculative exchanges are very much removed from the exchanges of actual value - the historical purpose of real markets). Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Fred Guy <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 21:50:30 + Subject: [PEN-L:19687] Re: Re: Re: Socialism Now I would find it helpful if you specified what you mean by 'socialism' and 'socialisied'. I am skeptical because some of the past uses of 'socialised' in this context do not seem applicable today. There was an argument based on certain isomorphisms of socialist and capitalist production and administrative systems in the heyday of mass production. Hence the convergence literature of the sixties, and some of the arguments advanced by Harrington and Galbraith in the seventies. Since then, the state socialist half of this isomorphism has collapsed, and the capitalist half has moved on. But maybe I'm just out of date. So please expand. Fred Guy
Re: Re: Re: Re: Socialism Now
>From Gar: "Hard-headed types? Greg there hundreds, perhaps thousands of groupsicals, with heads that are not only hard, but made of pure wood." Yes that was a very unfortunate expression. I suspect that as a general rule of thumb what ever is achieved in the future will be despite the efforts of these groups. Indeed to get anywhere at all anti-utopianism will be the axe needed to cleve away such dead wood. In all seriousness if anything politicall progressive emerges I believe it will emerge from the international forum of the net. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Gar Lipow <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 09:09:22 -0800 Subject: [PEN-L:19686] Re: Re: Re: Socialism Now
Socialism Now
Aside from proletarian power, what is absent from today's society that would be needed for socialism to work as a economic system? Nothing! That's right not a single thing is needed aside from proletarian control - all the social mechanisms exist albeit in the hands of the ruling class. Marx could not say this nor Lenin, but we can. Socialisation exists to a degree that only the missing force of class direction remains to be acquired. Somehow, the left has missed this altogether. Ask the left what is required for socialism and it will say, the abolition of private property in the means of production, the removal of the chaos of the market and proletarian power. Suggest that the market is all but extinct (at the hands of monopolies) and the means of production have already socialisied the means of production (through public companies) and that all that remains is therefore creating proletarian power that can grow only by exercising its will through what history has provided and the response will be a barrage of formulations which "prove" this is not the case. The fact is that socialism does not have to wait, that historically it has already come of age but in a guise we didn't expect, the struggle for its Proletarian future should be taking place in the here and now. The stopper in the bottle, the only thing holding back the historical forces for this struggle is ironically the left itself. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: Re: Socialism Now
Bill, the problem is partly found in your answer. That is you see proletarian socialism as the objective, as an abstraction which must be sold to the people. It is, by this thinking, already a sometime-in-the-future-thing. It is the error of these past decades of the movement that we have reduced ourselves to the role of educators. My point is that historically this is not so, that the level of socialisation already established by the bourgeoisie, effectively means there is no great day when leading elements of capital must be socialisied, as this is already achieved. What is missing is proletarian power, that is something that can be built, built around struggles to change, in its interest, what works against it. No one needs to be convinced of this, they don't have to embrace the socialist cause to struggle for changes that are in their interests - they do not have to be won over. What they do need is some hard-headed types take up a bundle of needed changes and weld them together into a coherent political platform - why mention socialism, surely that is an educative question and not a meaningful struggle? The utopianism which collectively poisons us, is the idea that essentially we are about winning everybody to the utopian ideal. In struggle there will be plenty who want to know more and understand the historical forces involved, but for most folks this is mere garnish in the more material struggle to get things running right. In a sense the way you have put the question places the cart before the horse and then dispares because it will not move. Try it around the other way, in the struggle for proletarian change, more people will be won over to the notion and magically without prejudice, their socialism will become the expression of the struggle they are already engaged in. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: "William S. Lear" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2001 08:21:49 -0600 Subject: [PEN-L:19684] Re: Socialism Now Sorry, but I find this a bit facile. There is a tremendous entrenched power that knows very well how to wage class warfare and it has been doing so quite effectively. To say that "nothing" is needed, save the left get out of its own way, ignores the immense work to be done to convince, for example, the vast majority of Americans, that socialism does not mean Soviet-style rule. Bill
Socialism Now
Aside from proletarian power, what is absent from today's society that would be needed for socialism to work as a economic system? Nothing! That's right not a single thing is needed aside from proletarian control - all the social mechanisms exist albeit in the hands of the ruling class. Marx could not say this nor Lenin, but we can. Socialisation exists to a degree that only the missing force of class direction remains to be acquired. Somehow, the left has missed this altogether. Ask the left what is required for socialism and it will say, the abolition of private property in the means of production, the removal of the chaos of the market and proletarian power. Suggest that the market is all but extinct (at the hands of monopolies) and the means of production have already socialisied the means of production (through public companies) and that all that remains is therefore creating proletarian power that can grow only by exercising its will through what history has provided and the response will be a barrage of formulations which "prove" this is not the case. The fact is that socialism does not have to wait, that historically it has already come of age but in a guise we didn't expect, the struggle for its Proletarian future should be taking place in the here and now. The stopper in the bottle, the only thing holding back the historical forces for this struggle is ironically the left itself. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Creating a political platform
and struggle to make it better (it is however, alas, not what "communist" organisations have done - more the pity). Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: Re: Re: Victory to Empire
sagreements here, rather it again underlines how much needs to be straightened out before we can talk (ie not you and I but the left as a whole), let alone act cohesively. What I would like, if my redefinition of reform meets with your approval is that we continue discussing the things you have raised which I would put as a number of contrary views. 1. Do we need to expose and descredit social democracy when it has done such a good job of this itself? 2. Can reformism really assume in present conditions the role that it use to have? 3. Are we now looking at the world divided into two vast camps (to paraphrase Marx) international bourgeoisie against a yet to be politically formed international working class? 4. What exactly has changed? Best wishes and comradely salutations Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: ALI KADRI <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 23:55:37 -0800 (PST) Subject: [PEN-L:19611] Re: Re: Victory to Empire I agree I see no disagreement, but the historical pattern that evolved in the twentieth century gives room for more pessimism than optimism. particularly the role of social democracy in the west, living examples are schroder and blurr not to forget mitterand. it is true that now with direct competition there is more room for unity but the opposite is also true. in the present balance of forces, reversion to nationalism is more likely. the idea that at rock bottom they are victims of the same process is true but that also was always the case. so now comes the question why. it seems that any compromise or unprincipled action on the part of the working class allows it to fall into the trap of bourgeois ideology. the working class should bring the bourgeois to its playing field in an uncompromising manner. talk of reform when the stakes are high represent a sort casuistry of bourgeois thought. the raw unreformed uncompromising position are where the working class can reveal the objective process of exploitation at its best. example: cancer, an environmentally triggered disaster, and other disasters in the making should for questions of bare existence unite all, but it did not. workers kill themselves with own pollution everywhere yet do not unite. things are perceived in such a way that it is a matter of survival to pollute because profits depend on pollution and jobs depend on profits. social democratic reform was at the root of this conception. it compromised once and again and mastered the art of working class differentiation. it is probably time to discredit the social democrats else if the same pattern evolves there will be more than just cancers killing workers. i maybe wrong like any good academic would say, although here i am pretending to be one, but probably reform (whatever is meant by it the word itself is inappropriate) in the present circles is another fall into the same trap. instead of reform i think i would call it the workers should grab what they can without compromising an iota, leave room for struggle always.
Re: Victory to Empire
Thanks Ali for this reply. --- Message Received --- From: ALI KADRI <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 07:16:44 -0800 (PST) Subject: [PEN-L:19574] Re: Re: Victory to Empire "there is a possiblity of reform but it will be that that deepens the international division of labour- poor nations poorer and rich bought off working classes in the rich countries, all under the banner of nationalism. what will it take in between 2001 and 2010 to bring the rate of profit to levels higher than that of the nineties. the demand component in the third world is irrelevant so commodity relaization is out and war is in. " This is a real possiblity, in fact the only party in my country which is actually putting up a platform for actual reforms - is a right-wing one (One Nation) and their whole purpose is to strengthen Australia in isolation and over those of our niegbours. The process of buying off- working class struggle in the "west" has been a complex one and has now dissapated (the process of buying-off not the relative privilege) which is my major point. Workers in the "West" are now directly competing against poorer workers elsewhere - this is a new thing and I believe the eventual foundations for real solidarity. The comparison is striking between any group of workers that come into competition. One element fears them because they see it directly eroding their position (which in a sense it is designed to do), the elemental force to tap is the other response, that of mutual solidarity which at least supports the hope that all workers can and should enjoy a reasonable existence. But this is sci-fi under the conditions of world-wide worker defeat. The critical question is what is needed to regroup the working class on a world-wide basis. Now no-one pretends that the position of a worker in the Australia is similar to that of an Indonesian worker, yet in many regards the interests are similar and both share an interest in further democratising their own states and using those states to further satisfy their interests by somewhat similar means - better wages in socially useful production. In the broad sweep, the political platform for one group of workers is exactly the same for the other, though obviously differing in the details and nature of the struggle. But no such broad plaform has been articulated and until it is there is no way of knowing if the details will end up deepening the international division of labour or not. For my money it is a safe bet that a coherant international political platform, translated into specific national reforms would create room for real solidarity rather than diminish it, and real progress, politically, socially and economically. What you say about the crisis of realisation and why this has turned to war, is on the whole absolutely correct, in fact I agree with your dates - at least a decade of turmoil is ahead of us. The sticking point is probably my use of the word reform (meaning realisable goals). Of course the alternative is to keep on doing what we are doing - which is harmless. Ali I do not know if we have a real disagreement, and I cannot talk for workers in developing economies, I can however say that the problems here with the state and production are not disconnected with the problems elsewhere. There is commanlity in the direction that things are taking which we collectively are not properly responding to, just getting to the position where by geniune proletarian reform movements do come into conflict over the division of international labour would be to my mind a step forward from the passive situation which exists today. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: Victory to Empire
the point it would seem part-proven by the state in which we find ourselves. However, the point may be to have a debate which shatters fixed notions and allows us to move on. ANyhow, that is how I honestly see the state of play at the moment and the main tasks ahead. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: Victory to Empire
The first thing I should say is that I am not altogether convinced that the Taliban has collapsed, it was in Kurisowa's film the Seven Samurai that the character Kambei says that every good fortress leaves a way open to entice the enemy into a trap. Kabul is such an opening, and has been used as such in previous Afghan wars, Kabul has been taken many times, holding it and leaving it is where the trouble begins. Kabul is a magnet, naturally for the Northern Alliance, but it is also an Allenby's Damascus, the place where imperial power must be demonstrated by governance - it is one place where large numbers of American's must congregate and then be enclosed by winter (a mini-Stalingrad comes to mind). Of course this is mere speculation and the Taliban may have simply run into the hills never to return. A lot of POWs may be the most convincing sign of real collapse, even the signs of joy at the the Taliban's exodus may be a misreading of actual loyalities when push comes to shove. But so much for armchair readings of far off battles - chances are that things are exactly as portrayed in the media and it is all over bar the shouting. "So at the moment of victory for the Empire, we should ask what version of Empire it will be. Not of course a social imperialist one. But why not a social democratic one? Will that keep the multitude under more effective control?" "Can the US hegemonists and the neo-liberals maintain a stable and defensible front line against this war of movement?" A good and thoughtful contribution Chris especially these last two paragraphs which is the critical contradiction of our period. Things are moving fast, so fast I find it difficult to keep in view very much of the whole picture. Intentions are one thing (re Bush and Blair) the contradictions they are responding to another, somewhere in between history is being made. I am also glad you raised the all important problem of whether reforms help or hamper humanity. The normal knee-jerk reaction from Marxists is that the mere mention of raising reforms is to succomb to reformism. However, the contradiction we face is our own irrelevance, that is if we do not start to raise sensible and realisable reforms the direction is given and it is not in the end a pretty one. There is no-one putting forward the interests of working class in any meaningful way, there is no coherence to what is said on the left and no political direction except cultish oppositionalism. In short, unless individual states are reformed, the international order cannot be otherwise than chaotic. What seems to be ignored is the predicament of historical social-democracy. There is no social ground for such reformism, in just a decade it seems to have evaporated completely. Yet the revolutionary left reifies reforms as the essence of reformism, which was never the case - reformism is not even simple the restriction of struggle to legalisied procedures though it necessarily requires this form, but the substitution of class power for inter-class recognition of leadership - little wonder it has vanished as the ruling class cares little for the fine balancing of social hegemony within any particular state. The question is what does the left fear from realisable reforms when the historical conditions for reformism have so obviously dissappeared? Practicality and realisability would bring coherence and platform to any number of class interests, interests in making the state much more democratic, controling capital and providing for all variety of social need without relying on bureacratic measures. It seems obvious that by so changing states from the bottom up, there becomes a basis in the real world for creating a more sensible international order. Could this lead to Empire more completely, in the end, stupidfying the masses (multitude if you like), it is difficult to see how, in fact it seems difficult to comprehend how Empire may be fought by any other means. For Empire to recreate reformism on a significant scale in this period of time would be to turn the clock back and recreate a parochial bourgeoisie. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 13 Nov 2001 07:31:29 + Subject: [PEN-L:19564] Victory to Empire
Re: Capitalists and patriotism
Charles, I don't know if this relevant. What strikes me in far away Australia and a vision gleaned only from the mass media, is that American politics looks so openly corrupted and so obviously involved in pay-outs to coorporate supporters under Shrub jnr it resembles the period well before America embarked on Imperialism proper. It is the sort of open corruption that might be practiced by a state within the US rather than by the US itself. Of course this is only an impression. I am not niave enought to believe that the same sort of thing has not been practiced widely before, but it is its virtual openness, the fact that it is done without even a believable pretense that is new to me. The fact that this is happening when the US is in serious trouble (economically and militarily) may be a cover of a kind, but in another way it makes the naked grab of public money all the more obvious. I throw one theoretical point, inso much as imperialialism was an expression of national capital (monopolistic and financial) all the means of corruption and state business welfare had a grander purpose, hence a cover and a discipline which appears missing at the moment. The fact that it is consumer spending which seems to be compounding the economic downturn, seems partly explicable, not just to the fear of attack (which might have expressed itself many different ways) but to an unconscious acknowledgement of a lack of any real national leadership even from an Imperial standpoint. It is not that just that the US has been made to walk on dangerous ground, but that it appears too drunk with power to walk in even a straight line and therfore courts more danger with every step. I was struck by Blairs speech last night in his attempt to bolster up wavering UK support for the "war" he ably expressed what the opposing Islamic forces believe, that the "west" is decadent, weak and will not stay the course. Strangely despite his protest that this was not the case, it seemed unerringly accurate, almost satirical in its effect. For once I am not joining the anti-war stance, the damage to the Afghan people has already been done, hundreds of thousands will starve, their doom is sealed with the changing seasons, which I really think the military planners in a Napolonic/Hitlerian way have not properfly considered. Having done their damage I now want American and its allies, on the ground, fighting in Afganistan - nothing but military disaster on a grand scale will lance the sore quickly and force the US to re-address its international responsibilities. I have every confidence that US forces, when they are in reach, will be diced-up in no uncertian fashion and despite all their fire power - it is after all Afghanistan. Meanwhile I only expect things to get worse in the US economically. Bought elections and corrupt regimes only excerbate economic crisis. It is not that such things are new in the US, but that I beleive it has lost its original purpose and will jack-knife the passage of any real solutions. The Political aspect of Political Economy is ever becoming a critical factor - the dull-eyed Georgian leadership does not bode well for a revival of US domestic confidence. Charles I apologise for being a prophet of doom, but Blair's speech really was, for me, the icing on the cake. The quickest and perhaps least cruel way out of this international travesity may well be grand disaster on an epic scale. I believe the play of Imperialism is over, it is just that the old actors refuse to leave the stage. They could have left with dignity, bowing to the curtain, but it looks like in the end they will have to be booted out of the theartre so that a new play might begin. Of course if they continue to bomb from afar, destroying one mud hut after another, unleashing high tech explosives on three men in a trench while the Northern Alliance asks for even more (they are not stupid, new uniforms, weapons and ever more technical barter is demanded and is handed over eagerly - not always the inducement to fight that the US thinks) and warms itself close to its domestic hearths, then I think the US will be laughed off as more igenious methods are found to hit at its homeland as reprisal measures. There are many other ways things may go, but at the moment with corporations plundering the public purse, military impasse being snowed in, leadership reduced to puppetry, the US public terrorised and economic crisis looming large - options appear limited. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: "Charles Brown" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Wed, 31 Oct 2001 10:28:17 -0500 Subject: [PEN-L:19218] Capitalists and patriotism
Re: Re: Re: Lenin and Engels, force and violence
G'day Ian, I will look for Sklar's work as soon as I can. I must confesss to being very out of touch with recent publications and this sounds like something well worth exploring. In terms of strategic assessments, there is I think a tripartite division rather than a simple opposition between legal and illegal, a ground which lies in between which I would call extra-legal - it is this which I think is the aiming point. Breaking laws is in itself no big thing, there are so many laws on the books that technically many of us are in breach at least some of the time just going about our normal lives. In a sense it has always been the case of that there are laws and laws, the defining point being the readiness of the state to act and having acted how much social agreement there is to the action. I could, if this does not sound like too much of word play, say communists should follow legal forms when these fall directly in line with class interests, otherwise they should act outside such concerns. Illegality in the meaniful sense only falls on those acts which cannot in themselves be justified socially. The trick is, I believe, not to make a fetish of the law one way or another - it is far more a moving feast than it is often given credit for, and far more flexible in practice than it appears in the abstract. I hope this makes sense, what cripples debate in my limited experience is when it is bound to legal vs illegal means when the means are everything and the legal questions for the most part abstract. Breaking shop windows for instance may be useful, but most often is not etc. Those that justify such actions as actions rarely look at usefulness rather they use symbolism as a justification (more often it is youthful rebellion and should be treated as such) anyhow symbolism is at best an artistic approach to decorating real action, it is silly that it should substitute for it. So other than underscoring the middle ground of extra-legal space in the debate, I am in agreement with you - it is as ever a strategic question. All the best and hope to hear more soon. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: "Ian Murray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 01:12:52 -0700 Subject: [PEN-L:19106] Re: Re: Lenin and Engels, force and violence [Hi Greg, see below] - Original Message - From: "Greg Schofield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > The pity is Chris I think my quibble has blunted the far more important point you were making in your original posting. > > I have been trying to get Marxists to talk on this vital area for sometime, not just "Empire" but imperialism as a passed period and the new situation of the state - to no avail!! == The leading US scholar on post-Imperialism is Richard L. Sklar. His work points to the ways and means by which corporate power is in the drivers seat of the global political economy, with a theory of classes that is richly informed by ideas from Paul Mattick Jr., Rolf Dahrendorf, Marx, Veblen, C Wright Mills and others. One of the best texts to analyze the current conundrums, that incorporates[hah!] those researchers ideas with acute attention to the legal history of capitalism in the US is SCott Bowman's "The Modern Corporation and American Political Thought." As far as I can remember, the text does not show up in H&N's work. > > Why is it? Why cannot decent debate be made on these topics?? > > I suspect because they cut to close to the heart of things and few are prepared to look inside - whatever the reason it is damned frustrating. > > Perhaps looking at class force (the idea of having political force in the present age) might help - I do not know. I again suspect thaqt much of the political discussion that does happen is far more reified than it at first appears - there is still a lot of silly squabbling about lines as if these have any impact when the very basics of class organisation are in tatters. > > Extra-legal force is something that interests me very much, illegal force not at all (all shades of terrorism as far as I am concerned - a best a fairly harmless outlet for the frustrations of youth, at worst - well we know aspects of that well enough). > > Again Chris I apologise for bringing in a side issue and appear once again to have killed off useful debate by so doing. > > Greg Schofield > Perth Austrlia Well that's where we on the left, such as it is, must be strategic; the boundary between the 'legal' and the 'illegal' and how those terms are constituted by class interests. Ian
Re: Lenin and Engels, force and violence
The pity is Chris I think my quibble has blunted the far more important point you were making in your original posting. I have been trying to get Marxists to talk on this vital area for sometime, not just "Empire" but imperialism as a passed period and the new situation of the state - to no avail!! Why is it? Why cannot decent debate be made on these topics?? I suspect because they cut to close to the heart of things and few are prepared to look inside - whatever the reason it is damned frustrating. Perhaps looking at class force (the idea of having political force in the present age) might help - I do not know. I again suspect thaqt much of the political discussion that does happen is far more reified than it at first appears - there is still a lot of silly squabbling about lines as if these have any impact when the very basics of class organisation are in tatters. Extra-legal force is something that interests me very much, illegal force not at all (all shades of terrorism as far as I am concerned - a best a fairly harmless outlet for the frustrations of youth, at worst - well we know aspects of that well enough). Again Chris I apologise for bringing in a side issue and appear once again to have killed off useful debate by so doing. Greg Schofield Perth Austrlia --- Message Received --- From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 07:54:30 +0100 Subject: [PEN-L:19101] Lenin and Engels, force and violence I much appreciate the importance of Greg's textual quibble and Chris Doss's illuminating inisght into the problems of translation. Yes I was taking a bit of a swipe against ultra-leftists who IMO severely damage the possibilities for creative applications of Marx's critique of capitalist economy by simplistic, dogmatic, and mechanistic distortions. More carefully expressed my thinking is very similar to Greg's on this - as seen in the post I recycled to LBO-talk about Lenin against terrorism and in favour of street protests and mass struggle. Yes in my copy of State and Revolution I have ringed the English word "violent" where Lenin, as you quote, refers to "this panegyric on violent revolution" and I have noted in the margin that "Engels uses the word 'force' " Below I noted "The argument about force is an argument for self-reliance." (As indeed can be checked because you quote the whole of Engels' argument. There are plenty of people languishing on lists to do with Marx, who do not know how to apply the ideas concretely. My intuition remains that at the moment it is important to continue (within the rules of debate) to smite the ultra-leftists hip and thigh, if the fundamental relevance of the marxist approach is to be recaptured for the struggle against global finance capital in this unbelievably cruel world. (This world is as cruel as the nineteenth century when the British administration having supported two extensive charity appeals, continued to preside over the exportation of corn from Ireland during the potato famine!) It really is so unacceptable as to be ridiculous. Marxism is too important a tool for criticising global capitalism to be left in the hands of the smug and arrogant dogmatists. Chris Burford London From: "Greg Schofield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Negri interview Date: Fri, 26 Oct 2001 00:20:03 +0800 Thank you Chris, I am not sure how it helps, but at least it confirms my suspicion that the translation brings its own interpretation (my mono-linguistic abilities curse me yet again). If it is probably the word 'neistovy', I guess it draws close to a meaning like "unpiously aggressive" (based on it being a negative of fanatical/devoted which could mean I suppose something like pious and saintly - violence would be a fair rendition but not really an exact one). Thankyou for you expertise, on such little things a lot may turn. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Chris Doss <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "'[EMAIL PROTECTED]'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Thu, 25 Oct 2001 18:43:24 +0400 Subject: RE: Negri interview (does anyone know the Russian word which has been translated into violent, perhaps it has more than this meaning?) Probably 'neistovy.' It's a negative. 'Istovy' on its own means something like 'fanatical' or 'devoted.' Can't figure that semantic logic out, but there it is. Chris Doss The Russia Journal
The sexual division of labour and nature
oncept of "nature" as Marx used it, is room for an elaboration that he never made, we are not given the choice of dispensing with it or any short-cuts (ie modifications) rather at some point it has to be taken head on. If the natural division of labour is dispensed with then so too is the natural economy of pre-class societies and as they fall we loose sight of the peculiar nature of a society driven by social contradictions which stand on nature but work themselves out largely free of its constraints - in otherwords we lose sight of what is peculiar about capitalism - of contradictions running free through social life and tied into nature only at the point of production - which in history is a rather peculiar position to be in. Famine kills peasants, but in capitalism a bad season is an adjustment of prices in a world system. That is very peculiar - historically speaking - a capitalist farmer may go bankrupt but s/he will not suffer biologically because of nature's mischief. To return to the sexual division of labour as a natural one. The connection between nature and this division is not genetically determining (this could not have entered Marx's head), but biologically determining. 20th century thought dominated by genetics makes this mistake by identifying biology too closely with genes, hence to say nature is responsible becomes code for saying that genes determine. Despite Dawkins genes are not the be all and end all of biology, our bodies and their functions are not simply outgrowths of the battle for survival of genes - our bodies exist as natural entities within nature. Biological evolution is the struggle of existence of individual animals, which gains evolutionary expression through genes and is expressed as developing species (species don't compete, nor genes, but individual animals do even when they club together as protio-social animals). Humans by inventing society did not escape nature but side-stepped some of the natural contradictions. From a social perspective, individuals do not compete but societies do (compete for natural resources in the same sense of Darwinian animals do). This is a major difference that distinguishes human existence from animal existence. The social whole competes against other social wholes (not as much as some would think), but constantly it competes for its existence against nature, nature in this sense imposes limits but more so appears as both provider and enemy. Given a social group which has to reproduce both socially and biologically (the former presupposing the latter) is pressed by nature (which may well include other human beings in other social groups) the invention of the sexual division of labour is natural (notice the contradictions of invention which is social and natural which is imposed). Rather then being gene driven, it is biologically driven that is given biologies manifestation in living human beings of both sexes and a number of ages at any one time. This is a given just as biological roles in sexual reproduction are. It is a natural condition, wholly natural - but the response to it is social (in fact the proportions of age and sex and the number of those within a given society results from social production not any pregiven genetic disposition) - thus the sexual division of labour was an invention, not a gene driven cul-de-sac, but one directly determined by nature. Marx's conception (carried on by Engels) is correct in calling such a division natural, for once societies came into being the struggle of individual existence was sublimated to the struggle for on-going social existence and this dictated that women were best left to the tasks near the camp and men best left to the risks of the periphery. A society can loose a lot of males and still succeed in reproducing itself socially and biologically, but it can afford to lose only a few reproductive females before it goes into crisis - that is the connection between nature and society - the biological imperative from what so much has grown and that is why Marx properly identified it as natural. Now that we live in gigantic societies (perhaps just one gigantic society) where social contradictions are allowed to playout (there is a definite natural limit to how far this can proceed), the sexual division of labour remains, but only as a hang-over from our shared history (not denying its critical importance in less developed parts of the world). The 20th century could well deny there was anything natural about it, but this is a product of our times and an anachronism that should not be loaded onto Marx. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Carrol Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "[EMAIL PROTECTED]" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 21:21:00 -0500 Subject: [PEN-L:19019] Re: query: Engels & anthropology]] I fwd Jim's query to a Chicago an
Re: Re: Re: query: Engels & anthropology
ive" throw-back of serfdom (which outwardly resembles but does not have a kin based logic). Thus the first great expansion of exchange value in classical times (whose strongest expression was in trade) has its effects sublimated into an apparent anti-exchange value economy (trade dies off) which by way of its passage makes way for a re-emergence of exchange-value freed from the need to be expressed as external trade as its dominant expression. I hope this makes sense without sounding too cosmological. The re- emergence of trade played a vital part in ending feudalism however social evolution via feudalism now provided exchange value with a more powerful means of social expression in that of the freed labourer (the village being now a source for such labour, which no-communal based kinship society could long sustain). Of course this is not the usual way the transformation is portrayed but is, I think, just the other side of the coin to Marx's primitive accumulation - I am simply emphasizing why slavery and feudalism had to be presupposed by capitalism. What I particularly like about Dobbins concept is that it shows how labour is the engine for social change - that plunder is not a sufficient basis for early accumulation and that the idea that the most productive prospered is laid to rest as a bourgeois myth - it is the least productive who prospered (their labour might have been necessary but not open to much improvement - ie priests and warriors) and hence leisure became the "profit" of ancient economies (something the Greek philosophers were all too clear about). Likewise the nature of change becomes more satisfactorily understood as a rebellion against systems that get out-of-kilter and the setting up of a new more equal (based on what passed beforehand) systems which of course gave birth to new contradictions - the transformation of kin relations being the subject of Engels thesis. To turn things on their head a little, social progress is a result of instabilities in production (lack of success in maintaining productive levels giving rise to great unevenness) - "primitive" societies are therefore those which skillfully changed themselves in order to preserve communal life (unalienated), they are in this way also great success stories of the human spirit. I will not add any more but am ever willing to elaborate ; ) Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tue, 23 Oct 2001 12:21:32 -0700 Subject: [PEN-L:19012] Re: Re: query: Engels & anthropology thanks for your reply. It was quite useful. Could you please give a quick summary of Dobbins' theory of the missing dialectic? At 10:21 AM 10/23/01 +0800, you wrote: >If you are interested to track down a pamphlet by (I think) Peggy >Anne Dobbins "From Kin to Class" you will find that she has >discovered the missing dialectic in the equal exchange of necessary >labour ... Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~JDevine "Segui il tuo corso, e lascia dir le genti." (Go your own way and let people talk.) -- K. Marx, paraphrasing Dante A.
Re: late colonialism
--- Message Received --- From: "Ian Murray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Lbo-Talk@Lists. Panix. Com" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 23:22:59 -0700 Subject: [PEN-L:18987] late colonialism "America's pipe dream A pro-western regime in Kabul should give the US an Afghan route for Caspian oil" This has been on my mind for a while. As I said in another post until recently I thought the anti-islamic thrust was simply a mistake, now I am coming to believe that indeed the islamic world as a whole is being taunted (under which lies so much oil) - is the end result going to be the toppling of a series of regimes and perhaps the "privatisation" of the world's major oil reserves? I pose this in ignorance, but as I see Bush go out of its way to anatagonise islamic world wide I remain suspicious of other more far reaching agendas. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: query: Engels & anthropology
ved from academic resources I would not have a clue what has happened in the last twenty years in this area. Good luck Engels has a few big surprises in his little work Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 15:18:26 -0700 Subject: [PEN-L:18974] query: Engels & anthropology Has there been a serious effort to consider Engels' _Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State_ from the perspective of recent anthropology, i.e., to present a serious critique (rather than a trashing) and reconciliation? (The effort by Evelyn Reed in the edition that I own seems to be a bit too hagiographical.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] & http://bellarmine.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Discussion of Empire 26.10.01
Ian I had always assumed that the raw inter-state rivalry (most obviously 1914-1945) had overtime given way to "oligopolies securing markets via state intervention" and hence Imperialism persisted. Indeed up until the 1970s there is good reason to see this as a simple outgrowth. However, connected with the collapse of the USSR maintaining that the simple growth of Imperialism does not get us very far. Perhaps it was the existence of a second super-power which maintained it, perhaps it was overcome due to internal developments, but Imperialism as a conjunction between national finance capital and an Imperial state ceased to be a dominant contradiction very clearly by 1991. History has played a trick on us in this, I believe, we transformed the concept of Imperialism in order for it to be compatible with observed reality - hence the formula you use "oligopolies securing markets via state intervention" which originally rested on the conjuncture of national finance capital and an Imperial state became a general substitute for this specific historical phase of capital's development. That is a generalisation substituted itself for a specific historical dialectic and made Imperialism a truism. I have no doubt that in the foreseeable future "oligopolies securing markets via state intervention" will continue but the form of the intervention and the nature of "markets" have changed dramatically - the export of capital is no-longer recognisable in its older form and national financial capital has ceased to be a major player let alone a dominant form of capital. Of course older forms persist but they do so as secondary and subordinate features. To add to the confusion whatever is happening now does so disguised in its former history, the last super-power standing remains the major state player, but capital itself has got itself from under any particular state however much one particular state is favoured to do its bidding. Ian do not for one instance believe that my attempt to bury the concept of Imperialism has anything to do with painting a kinder face on capitalism, bourgeois rule remains a fundamental obstacle to social improvement and the machinations of capital in their hands a grinding burden on humanity. The point is to find those concepts which come to grips with the new possibilities the development of capital also brings forth. If we can correctly find the dominant dialectic of our period we will be in a position to politically know what to do at the state and international level. The tendency of the "left" to dissolve every action into a generalisied truism of Imperialism does not make anything clearer, despite the fact that it appears to be confirmed by the actions which so dominant in the news. Aside from any particular event there are areas which need to be explored - the further socialisation of the means of production and appropriation, the role of international credit capital (which I believe is the dominant form of capital and one much neglected - credit capital being the ability of international corporations to raise capital in any particular "market" based on their reputation a dividend providers ), the changing role of the state and its effects on social hegemony and of course international relations themselves.. Somehow all of this has to be brought under a single dialectic - something quite beyond my powers but not I think beyond our collective efforts. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: "Ian Murray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Mon, 22 Oct 2001 09:44:22 -0700 Subject: [PEN-L:18961] Re: Re: Re: Re: Discussion of Empire 26.10.01 - Original Message - From: "Greg Schofield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > Ian, I would put to you that given the concept of Imperialism developed by Lenin (which I believe lies at the core of our collective understanding) - the evidence is in a sense just in such an exhaustion of the means of Imperialist competition. = By imperialist competition do you mean raw inter-state rivalry or oligopolies securing markets via state intervention in the politico-econ. affairs of another state. > Bear with me a little. Lenin's Imperialism was conceived as a transitional stage, part of the process of further socialisation of the means of production and property as such. In this it was defined by the conjunction of national finance capital with existing states, which established the basis for imperial competition (and the nature of Imperialism as such). == Got it; except that the contradiction that emerged was socialization of MOP while deepening the legal appuratuses of liberal-private property. Powerful states use a vast array of techniques to induce other states to adopt property and contract law to secure stable expectations fo
Re: Re: An invitation to the graveside to bury the past
sts... merely express in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes." On this I can only concur, if we could only shift our gaze from far horizons and just for an instance take in what is all about us the way forward would not be difficult to find. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 21:24:53 +0100 Subject: [PEN-L:18936] Re: An invitation to the graveside to bury the past At 21/10/01 10:48 +0800, you wrote: Having just sent a posting (to "Discussion of Empire 26.10.01") I thought I would follow it up. Although not in the language of Hardt and Negri (which I also find difficult) you seem to be calling for as radical a rethink. But can it succeed in a compete break through images of graveside and burial? After all Marx wrote about how communist society emerges [his emphasis] from capitalist society and is thus "in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges." So is this not likely also to be true of the left wing tradition? On these lists the spontaneous consciousness is to look for fellow isolates from the cruelty of capitalism and to bond together in sectarian and superior separateness from ordinary people. A smattering of knowledge of marxism, plus an arrogant supply of self-confidence can silence more enquiring voices looking for radical change which may not always lead to a violent revolution but will unite with much larger numbers of people. Perhaps we cannot ask left-wing people to bury their past but to celebrate it and re-explore it. When you say: The proof of the pudding, and all that, is all around us. That for me is reminiscent of the proposition in the Communist Manifesto that "The theoretical conclusions of the Communists... merely express in general terms, actual relations springing from an existing class struggle, from a historical movement going on under our very eyes." But then if we sound too optimistic about that, we can be accused of utopianism Back to the graveside! Chris Burford London
Re: Discussion of Empire 26.10.01
s some real political importance), it is not in-itself an adequate concept. Imperialism was dominant because of a conjuncture between state interests and national finance capital. The nexus between the state and leading capital has since been broken which would tend to relegate state interests to a lower level and leave open the question of what is the dominant form of capital in our period (though I think Lenin answers this himself - ie that it is a form of Socialism). All of which brings us back to Lenin. First you are absolutely right that Lenin's concern was immediate political issues and not the exposition of abstract historical concepts. Lenin wrote for 1914 (well for the then immediate period) and this is, for me, the source of most of the erroneous reading of him and why it has been the most passing aspect of his work (the immediate political) which has been preserved while the underlying abstract concepts have been so neglected. I would turn your observation around and address it in a backwards fashion. Given the immediate political impact of Lenin's work on Imperialism (that is in shaping the political foundations of what would become the Third International - that is the promise of that International not all the less than savoury aspects that did emerge), could this have been done without an adequate abstract historical concept of the period? Obviously I am arguing that buried within Lenin's Imperialism is much more than a political platform (which can only be an expression of a particular level of development), is a full historical concept and not just some journalistic observation. So long as we lived in times when the major contradictions were compatible with Lenin's political conceptions, the more abstract levels need not overly concern us because in a sense we could take them at face value. However, once things change, once the dominant contradiction moves, then the need to find the correct level of abstraction becomes vitally important. At such a point in time, we can denounce Lenin as merely a political figure whose day is over (this is entirely legitimate argument though I would strongly disagree with it), or we are forced to find within his political pronouncements the abstract concepts which gave them shape and historical force. What we cannot do is maintain Lenin in the style of his corpse. I therefore cannot dismiss your reading of Lenin, but the conclusion of such a view can only be that Lenin like Mao is of passing historical impact (I would support that Mao was and remains a substantial military theorist but find little Historical Materialism in his works - I do not apply this limitation to post- 1914 Lenin). If Lenin's Imperialism is more than a passing political tract then what is it? For me it is one of the milestones in the development of Historical Materialism and act of praxis (political and theoretical insight together), the political impact has naturally faded, but not I think the theory has in the least, but I grant that it is no easy matter to extract it in its entirety. Carrol, no doubt by this response I have simply dug my grave deeper in your eyes, however, I cannot do otherwise as many stray pieces which I have been wrestling with for a time have begun to find their place and something of a comprehensible picture is emerging - not a static one where all forms are clothed in familiar colours, but a moving one where each colour exposes some unexpected feature. Politically, there are concrete suggestions which emerge from this, suggestions of struggling for direct popular control of the state, using the state to direct economy and using this democratic socialist struggle as a mainspring for international solidarity which maifests in actual changes of inter-state relations. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Carrol Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sun, 21 Oct 2001 12:50:12 -0500 Subject: [PEN-L:18931] Re: Re: Re: Re: Discussion of Empire 26.10.01 Greg Schofield wrote: > > > Ian, I would put to you that given the concept of Imperialism developed by Lenin >(which I believe lies at the core of our collective understanding) - the evidence is >in a sense just in such an exhaustion of the means of Imperialist competition. > > Bear with me a little. Lenin's Imperialism was conceived as a transitional stage, >part of the process of further socialisation of the means of production and property >as such. In this it was defined by the conjunction of national finance capital with >existing states, which established the basis for imperial competition (and the nature >of Imperialism as such). A common way of abusing Lenin (practiced by both friends and enemies) is to misjudge the level of abstraction at which, in any given case, he was operating. I think Greg does that here. _Imperialism_, I think, i
Re: Re: Re: Discussion of Empire 26.10.01
Ian thank you for you reply and I will do my best to respond to it. --- Message Received --- From: "Ian Murray" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 20:13:55 -0700 Subject: [PEN-L:18922] Re: Re: Discussion of Empire 26.10.01 From: "Greg Schofield" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > "Empire" in essence only makes one grand point, a point that has been religiously avoided - Imperialism is over and is in the process of being transformed into a "new world order" [Empire?] - of which we seem to get not even a glimmer of its true form. "What would constitute empirical evidence for the above claim? Just because colonization of territories via invasion and the installation of administrative appuratuses by/of conquering states no longer occurs along the same vectors does not mean that the dynamics or structures of intentionality that we associate with the imperialist mindset have disappeared." Ian, I would put to you that given the concept of Imperialism developed by Lenin (which I believe lies at the core of our collective understanding) - the evidence is in a sense just in such an exhaustion of the means of Imperialist competition. Bear with me a little. Lenin's Imperialism was conceived as a transitional stage, part of the process of further socialisation of the means of production and property as such. In this it was defined by the conjunction of national finance capital with existing states, which established the basis for imperial competition (and the nature of Imperialism as such). The exhaustion of the means of Imperialist struggle, is in essense the exhaustion of the conjunction beween finance capital and particular states. If this persisted then the contest itself would have the means for just that type of traditional territorial division and administration. In this sense there is no material grounds for the persistence of the Imperialist "mindset" except of course the wieght of previous history, which of course produces this very type of persistence (that is persistence in form not in essence). The mindset persists but only to clothe new movements and new contradictions. In short, given a close reading of Lenin's Imperialism, the real shock is not that Imperialism is over (Lenin himself lays the groundwork for this) but in the way the "left" persists in prolonging it conceptually. What I like in your response is that you follow your own logic well, the vectors and mindset you see are real - they appear to dispute what I am saying and this is properly said. But it hinges on appearance, moreover you correctly describe them as vectors and mindsets with which I would very much agree. Now the querstion is whether this actually supports the notion of Imperialism as still active or the reverse. Obviously I saw the reverse, but let it hand for a while just as a possiblity. "To assert that would be equivalent to stating that "the left" or some other group of self-identified agents had succeeded in transforming the way international relations theory, diplomatic history, international economics and a host of other disciplines taught in the US academies had succeeded in producing a sufficient number of dilpomats, bureaucrats etc. [not to menation business persons] who had managed to free themselves from the cognitive frameworks that drive capital accumulation. Just because international commercial law [law of contracts, property rights etc.] and jurisprudence is being changed and deepened in front of our very eyes does not mean that 'Empire' is the result of a counterfinality we can only dimly apprehend. The 'capitalists' and their managerial proxies no longer need to conquer with armies, they do it with legal doctrine that strives for invariances in a whole host of organizational/political contexts." We need to go back a few steps in this. First I by no means embrace the book "Empire" as a whole. Second I would not pin the transformation on a change of the intellectual apparatus of bourgeois rule but rather on the transformation of the property form of capital. This would, following Lenin, be a transformation which have two distinct but related aspects. The further socialisation of the means of production (including the means of appropriation to mainatain Lenin's important distinction) and the loosing of finance capital from the shackles of the protection of a particular state (ie one is no longer an expression of the other) - I would term the latter not in terms of the creation of international finance capital (IMF etc) but the emergance of International Credit Capital levered by international monopolies - (I may well be wrong on this). In a sense the training which has become so professionalised of the General Staff and personal servants of capital has gonbe hand in hand with the tra
An inivtation to the graveside to bury the past
Having just sent a posting (to "Discussion of Empire 26.10.01") I thought I would follow it up. I have over the past half-year partcipated in a good few marxist lists. Recently I have found myself at PEN-L and enjoying the level of debate. However, I would be lying to say that I have found anywhere the necessary level of debate I believe is essential for breaking out of the bind that the whole "progressive" movement finds itself in. This may not be something that this list wants to do - so be it, but when the world seems to be descending in a bucket so rapidly to hell, the opportunity to break with the past and move forward at least intellectually is surely a desirable thing. So what are the essential questions? If these are idle questions they will have no practical political impact. We can endlessly modify what we already except without disturbing things overmuch. However, real questions are not so passive. Has the period of Imperialism been passed over? If it has what has it transformed into? (If it has not then little needs to be changed). Have property forms been further socialisied and if they have how does this effect economic functions? (If they have not then everything more or less remains as it was). Clearly the propositions above as simple as they are are, if true, aspects of the same movement of capital. At their heart lies a single nexus the transformation of property in the hands of the bourgeoisie brings about a transformation in the state and the relations of states to each other. Stating it this way it seems a simple enough matter, the political implications are not even difficult to draw out. Given such changes, whatever their specific nature, the methods of struggle must also be transformed. Deny such changes and all is well and everything politically (despite the frustration) is essentially as it should be. Now, I am in no position to argue just what has happened to property let alone to the concsequences as manifested in the relations between states and the relation of the state with its citzens (I have strong suspicions and opinions but nothing which could be called persuasive). So I turn the question completly around. Given the conditions of the communist/socialist movement, how can we be satisified? The proof of the pudding, and all that, is all around us. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: Discussion of Empire 26.10.01
Chris, in the main, I very much agree with you below. There has never been a situation where international and national struggles have been so closely intermingled as there is today, but what has the left done in practical terms about this turn of events? Nothing - except to tread the same tracks they have since the 1970's. "Empire" in essence only makes one grand point, a point that has been religiously avoided - Imperialism is over and is in the process of being transformed into a "new world order" [Empire?] - of which we seem to get not even a glimmer of its true form. Strangely on other lists and before "Empire" came out I had been arguing a very similar point on a number of marxist lists and met with the same response - the minute logic conflicted with political prejudice silence finishes the debate. We stand at a turning point in our own development, on one side we can embrace comfortable utopianism and the political impotence that brings (the decision of avoiding a decision), on the other hand we are forced to make a break with our own past (the decision to develop Historical Materialism and let it take us where it wills - into the dark to explore unknown territories). In past posts, Chris you have used the term dogmatist rather generously (which in fact I do not disagree with), I would tend to apply the concept of Utopianism much more broadly not just as an intellectual fault (like dogmaticism) but one embracing methods of organisation, political conceptualization and over-arching shared ideology across the remnants of the communist movement. Utopianism may be why the main point of "Empire" must be ignored (while the method of dealing with anything untoward is naturally a dogmatic one). Ignored also are the implications of Ralston Saul (a self-proclaimed and consistent liberal with considerable insight) in "Unconscious Civilisation". Ignored also have bee the liberal critiques of post-modernism amongst other things. Notably the critiques of the present (post-modernist and anti-post-modernist) have not been the product of Marxism. Yet instead of Marxists aggressively rescuing what is good in these various "critiques" it has for the most part been content to dismiss them because of the political faults of their authors (not that the authors pretend to be anything other than they are). How odd it is when Marx studied bourgeois authors of Political Economy and Lenin studs his work on Imperialism with quotes from the most staunch bourgeois ideologists that we have collectively come to believe political persuasion condemns a work entirely and that any and all insights within such works must thereby be studiously ignored on pain of being accused of the same "errors". PS My background has not been a Trotskist one, but I share the irony that at such a time his idea against Socialism in one country has in practice been turned on its head by trotskists. In the past I would have ridiculed Trotsky's concept, but things have moved on, what I thought was ridiculous not so long ago now appears just as a plain fact of existence - this is my own ironic twist on our collective situation. --- Message Received --- From: Chris Burford <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Sat, 20 Oct 2001 23:27:27 +0100 Subject: [PEN-L:18912] Re: Discussion of Empire 26.10.01 At 20/10/01 13:08 +0800, Greg wrote: >Doug and all, the discussion of Callinocos' criticism of "Empire" may well >be true, but does not I think hit at the critical question itself. > >Insofar as the authors continue to give support to their pet form of >struggle, Callinocos' criticisms are worth considering. But "Empire" >attempts to do so much more than this and as the title suggests it is >looking at the transformation of Imperialism into "Empire". Perhaps Callinicos therefore really does not challenge this central point. There has been an odd change of left wing roles here. Although Trotsky's name is associated with the argument that socialism in one country is not possible, nowadays it is some of those who consider themselves most loyal to Trotsky who consider that the only way of fighting capitalism is within each separate country. And it is odd that these e-mail lists, which hold out the potentiality of a global resistance to Empire, are being used to deny the legitimacy of such struggle on a global basis. Meanwhile the transformation of imperialism into Empire is being accelerated by this war. The US remains the most powerful hegmon economically and militarily but it has been visibly weakened. Bush must now appeal for support, and he cannot be sure of getting it. There was a strange moment at the beginning of his speech to the APEC conference in Shanghai this morning, when he singled Powell out for praise and the meeting broke into applause. At some level he must calculate that Powell is a better symbol of internationalism than himself, and the wider constituencies matter. The o
Re: Discussion of Empire, 26.10.01
Doug and all, the discussion of Callinocos' criticism of "Empire" may well be true, but does not I think hit at the critical question itself. Insofar as the authors continue to give support to their pet form of struggle, Callinocos' criticisms are worth considering. But "Empire" attempts to do so much more than this and as the title suggests it is looking at the transformation of Imperialism into "Empire". Personally "Empire" and its type of argument irks me, however the authors have argued strongly and I believe correctly that the period of Imperialism and a new period has emerged. This I would put forward as the crux of the book, while the criticisms of Collinocos as they have been quoted in this thread seem confined to examining a political fault via a particular abstract theoretical reading of capital (which may be true) but not sufficient as it seems to miss the main point so thoroughly. To this I would say overlook the minutiae of "Empire's" theory and look at the stronger argument. Has Imperialism passed into something else? As an old style communist the tone and language of the book is already proof of an overall political problem with the authors, for me this can be assumed, but it does not detract from whether their main argument is true or not, or whether or not this main point touches on vital areas which need to be discussed more fully. Greg Schofield Perth Australia --- Message Received --- From: Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 19 Oct 2001 19:26:26 -0400 Subject: [PEN-L:18890] Re: Re: Re: Re: Discussion of Empire, 26.10.01
Re: Re: Lenin's Super-Imperialism part1
il rather miserably), but whether this conclusion >> actually grows out of and adds to the original conception (in this I >> believe it does, without for a second believing that this was on Lenin's >> mind at the time, rather it is a question that could only be posed long >> after him and in a very changed context). > > >But if you imply that the current situation should be characterised >differently, perhaps it would make these ideas clearer, if you did so. I may have to leave the bulk of this for a second email, but my present conclusion based on a number of other arguments is basically in this context: The further socialisation of capital is the key concept, the thread that gives expression to the variety of historical forms that capital adopts. Lenin remarks that production has been socialised to the extent that only the means of appropriation remain in private hands. I have read this to mean that the levers of national finance capital rested within private fortunes, and that likewise the monopolies dependant on this capital were still owned to some extent privately and through private shares (non-transferable). What I believe has happened is while the appropriation remains private (that is the actually rendered surplus) the means of appropriation has become socialisied through public shares. The trade in shares, which is no more than socialisied redistribution of the means of appropriation (meaningfully done between the big bourgeoisie with a residue of trash made available for the wider public) allows the bourgeoisie to plan on a world scale. In fact I would argue part facilitated by the trade in shares actual competition between big capital is blunted as the interconnections between world capital is so now enmeshed. What we take as the results of competition (that is the fall of one monopoly and the reassigning of markets to others) is more and more a result of evolving plans by the world bourgeoisie (I use the term plans loosely to encompass a tendency towards a logical super-exploitation of the world and the elimination of meaningful markets into regional price-fixed distribution and buying). I know having said this I can be shot down by any number of counter-examples, but I assume the persistence of many older forms of capital and am trying to identify a dominant and emerging character to our age - in short I believe we are in a period of Bourgeois Socialism, not that this promises any escape from class struggle or any better world, rather that capital in its developments has been forced to adopt the only logical means for its survival. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: Re: civilians as legitimate targets
thing is within the US hands to change, for all it has to do is openly start to rectify the on-going results of its past actions and change active policy which is daily resulting in needless innocent deaths. I do not expect all things to be done at once but it is reasonable to expect some to be done immediately. Imagine the effect of this on the world, imagine how much easier it would be to have bin Laden delivered and how many fewer deaths would result - military action may not even be required. Add to this that this could be started immediately with no more than a few announcements and also acknowledge that what stands as a barrier to this is an abstract and hypocritical rule created for convenience that "we should not give into terrorist demands" - let me be explicit - we should always do right regardless of who is articulating such a demand, this homily so often repeated of not giving in to such demands was created in order to persist in error (to place it squarely in folk wisdom - two wrongs do not make a right). Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: Re: Lenin's Super-Imperialism
ill in active contest - logically the various Imperial states will from time to time view such associations as against their interests and take action (very different from today when these supermonopolies are constantly wooed but never scolded). I hope this make some sense, Lenin in the last paragraph (Chapter5) qualifies the internationalism of the subject matter by stating that the then present international cartels are based on and in parallel to Imperial powers, however, his first paragraphs in the same chapter talk of Supermonopolies in a more generalised way (vis a vis Kautsky's rendition to them as a future cure all). I believe this makes clear sense only when conceding a logical instability of such international relationships during active imperialist competition - well that is at least the conclusion I have come to. Chris in this context, nothing disputes your excellent summary of the examples used by Lenin in Chapter 5. My point would only be that the question of instability adds some dimensions to these examples, and provides a conceptual way of distinguishing the past forms from the present. Obviously I do not expect anyone to swallow my conclusion as I have put it forward, the question is not whether I have provided enough weight of evidence (on such a basis I fail rather miserably), but whether this conclusion actually grows out of and adds to the original conception (in this I believe it does, without for a second believing that this was on Lenin's mind at the time, rather it is a question that could only be posed long after him and in a very changed context). At 06:40 27/09/01 +0100, you wrote: >At 26/09/01 10:19 +0800, Greg wrote: > >I suggest that that his main point [Lenin's] which differs somewhat from >today is the issue of territorial division. > >Why is that less important today? > >I would obviously refer to the anti-colonial movement of the 20th century, >but fundamentally the reason is related to the economic base, the >development of the means of production. In many leading spheres capital >can no longer compete merely on the basis of capturing the national >market: production has to be wider than the national market. > >I think there are probably also issues of how monopoly companies have >reacted to populist anti-trust legislation. They now make secret alliances >in more subtle ways than the crude cartels did at the end of the 19th >century, which were bound to come unstuck from time to time in mutual >recrimination. > >I fully agree that whatever has changed does not automatically mean we >should respect or hate Lenin any more or less. Lenin in this chapter >refers to "the historico-economic meaning of what is taking place; for the >forms of the struggle may and do constantly change in accordance with >varying, relatively particular and temporary causes, but the substance of >the struggle, its class content positively cannot change while classes exist." > >True he we was strongly suggesting in this work written under the >restrictions of censorship, a historically inevitable process, but it >could be perfectly consistent with his method now to discuss >retrospectively how the forms of control of economic production by >monopoly finance capital have changed. I agree very much with what you say above - I am no economist (in fact I am very ignorant of just what the bourgeoisie get up to economically), politically and historically I believe there is more than enough reasons for some spring-cleaning and development in this area. Could I add one more point, or rather pose a question (based on my assumption that we have moved past Lenin's Imperialism into something else). The conjunction of development of national financial capital with states that were capable of Imperial ambitions made Imperialism and monopoly capitalism more or less the same thing (expressions of the dominant character of capital as it had developed, Imperialism being both a necessary and determining expression). However, if it is assumed that Imperialism has given way to super-imperialism there is no need to assume that super-imperialism is itself an expression of the dominant character of capital as it has developed (it may be a necessary expression without be a determining one). The notion of superimperialism is of capital moving past and above states (it has moved past the essential conjunction of native capital developing within a power strong enough to become imperial in order to express itself as national financial capital). Rather super-imperialism may be useful in order to understand the actions of states, but the nature of capital itself as the dominant social relation (now above and directing states) may well be better comprehended by other concepts. I state this as a mere proposition. And thanks again Chris for you kind and thoughtful reply. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Re: Re: Lenin's Super-Imperialism (was Britain/US split?)
Chris I owe you an apology. I looked up your references below to Hardt and Negri and was genuinely surprised that I should be echoing their logic, in passing I also read some other interesting points they raise. What can I say except that they come at things from an angle which I find strained and oblique and at first put me off anything they were saying - I now find I must read them in detail. Strangely I had raised similar matters on other listservers where "Empire" was being discussed (universally criticized) and no one raised the point you have and for that I am grateful as I long believed I was the only one who saw this and thought it important. At 22:59 25/09/01 +0100, you wrote: >However the issue of super or ultra imperialism appears to be pertinently >discussed in detail by Hardt and Negri on pages 229 and 230 of Empire. > >They argue that while Lenin adopted the analytical propositions of >Hilferding and Kautsky he strongly rejected their political conclusions. > >The analysis hinges on the process of equalisation of the rate of profit. >Hilferding argued that "the domination and division of the world market by >monopolies had made the process of equalixation virtually impossible. Only >if the national central banks were to intervene, or better, if a unified >international bank were to intervene, could this contradiction, which >portends both trade wars and fighting wars, be equalized and placated." It seems I have much catching up to do before I raise anything worthwhile and for this I apologise to all those on this list. Greg Schofield Perth Australia.
Re: Re: Lenin's Super-Imperialism (was Britain/US split?)
ces, so much is happening so fast that any attempt of analysing trends and features must be welcome, however above this we do need to theoretically sort ourselves out and it would be wrong to force the issue by too directly applying abstractions to the complexities of the concrete (I am certainly in no position to do so). Trying to patch together a concept of "Super-Imperialism" and or "Bourgeois Socialism" or anything that is substantially new, on the run with an analysis of current events would only confuse matters further and should be avoided by any serious contributor. I raised this matter not as a cheap attack on phrases and modes of analysis used in order to sort-out recent events. In this existing knowledge and established theoretical concepts must be employed in the field, so to speak, in an effort that aspects otherwise hidden are revealed in order to gain a better understanding of the very complexity of what is happening - in otherwords we do the best we can with what we know without trying to impose concepts which are not properly developed. However, this also leaves room for developing new concepts which will or might, in the end, better aid our collective analysis (provided they are indeed well founded). It is a case of horses for courses. Within the level of relatively abstract theory "Super-Imperialism", "Bourgeois Socialism", whatever, may flounder theoretically but we need to explore these dimensions for until we truly grasp the character of our age we will not be able to politically articulate proletarian interests within it. One thing I believe is certain, the older concepts which have been patched and extended are now severely frayed and have insufficient. Lenin succeeded in first knowing his epoch and then articulating a political platform, but to do so he had to break with his own past as well as with the "heirs" of Marx and Engels. I believe we have to do something similar in order to develop, rather than depart from, Historical Materialism. Chris while this is no-where a full response to your posting I hope at least it frees me of being too closely associated with a book I have not yet read and posits my views within their correct level of abstraction. I am concerned with the long term political and theoretical future I make no pretense in being better informed or more acute analytically then many I have read on this list, indeed I feed parasitically on insights provided - I just cannot escape the dire need to move Historical Materialism on a step or two and break from the political bind we all now occupy. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
Lenin's Super-Imperialism (was Britain/US split?)
superceded, the logic has changed but works with what is at hand and that is the remnants of Imperialism from which it has grown. Again I see this as an unreal expectation of any historical process, in this sense nothing transcends its origin, nor can it. "...however internationalised the bourgeoisie might become, both culturally (sharing the same world view etc) and in terms of the economic interconnectedness and interdependencies which naturally develop in prolonged periods of peace, the bourgeoisie can never become a truly international class-for-itself." The trouble with approaching the subject matter in such a way is that absolutes like "never", "fully", "truly" etc carry all the weight of argument. If we were to shorten the above sentence into its logical components we are left with a fairly self-contradictory idea: "Despite the internationalisation of the bourgeoisie the bourgeoisie can never become internationalised." I do not believe this to be an unfair rendition, not just of this sentence but the logic of the argument presented in this positing. I do not accept such reasoning. "In 1914 the level of world trade and external investment was at least as high as today; the level of interpenetration among European and Anglo-American ruling elites was at least as deep and extended as far as sharing a common royal family (the Russian Tsar, the German Kaiser and the English king were all cousins), and the level of national sovereignty was far lower than today, since most of Europe was still trapped within the Tsarist and the Habsburg 'prisons of nations'." I have trouble with the reasoning in this piece as well. Whether or not the level of trade was as high seems irrelevant for surely the significant difference is how the movement of capital takes place and in this I cannot see the resemblance between national-financial capital moving into the other nations and the movement of international capital of the present period. As for the sharing of royal families and other types of marriage arrangements (rich Americans marrying European titles) I frankly cannot see the similarities at either the social, political or cultural levels with today. "That did not stop them going to war and it did not stop the swift recuperation of national loyalties and the whole shoddy symbolism of flags, hymn-singing and lachrymose public gatherings which are generally the harbingers to bloodbaths and the destruction in battle of a generation of young men.." I understood the reason they went to war was in order to promote various national financial capital into a leading and world dominant position - at least that was my reading of Lenin on the nature of Imperialist competition and its distinguishing characteristic. Lenin was no fool and new that such competition must lead to a winner, hence he called it a transition period. when there is a winner then of course the game changes, Lenin hoped this process would be usurped by proletarian revolution, but in terms of world history it was not, and Lenin's theory allowed for this in a backhanded way by his endorsement not of Kautsky's classless Super-Imperialism, but a reaffirmation of the centrality of class - Super-imperialism itself was then a logical extension just as now it is a real expression of the contradictions within capital. Political Postscript Until we can grasp the logic of our age, know the nature of capital as it has developed and be prepared to understand our theoretical heritage as a self-critical and developing body of knowledge, we will fail as we now fail in being able to articulate the contradictions of history in order to struggle. From Lenin's understanding of his age, from his understanding of Imperialism, he was able to draw out a political platform on which a revolution was made. He began this in 1914 when despite a world gone mad he took the time to read Hegel for the first time - to paraphrase CLR James - the source of all error is to hold onto a concept when it should be emptied. Lenin broke with the past in 1914, unless we are prepared to do the same thing we will forever be subject to the nightmare of our own fetished beliefs - it is not such a big step to let go the concept of Imperialism and embrace super-imperialism, but it may well be a vital one. Greg Schofield Perth Australia
