G'day Tony and Julien,
><Another problem is that financial capital is a highly instable abstract
>construct dependant on the real world relations of production and even
>on other stuff. And still another is the fact that finance capital as a
>whole acts without purpose.
>
>Finance capital acts with great purpose in trying to maximize profit,
>Julien. In running governments. In setting monetary policies.
>And suppressing resistance to its rule.
The pursuit of profit manifests in different ways in different places, Tony.
The whole Marxian critique of the pursuit of profit is to do with its
anarchic directionlessness in its doomed efforts to tear itself free of the
underlying contradictions it cannot help but create and intensify. The
finance sector can not free itself from the need for someone somewhere to
extract and transform things, and for those things to find a buyer. It has
been behaving like it can, but it can't, and the financial institution know
it - they just can't jump ship before their competitors do, as then they
might be missing out on appreciations their competitors are still creaming,
and that would be to lose their subscribers to their bolder peers. But
every now and then you hear one of 'em say something like this. They're
wide awake - ready at every moment to participate in an anarchic
directionless flight - and then we shall suddenly see that 'finance' is no
monolithic agent at all.
>You continue in the same vein......
> <One could thus argue that, barring exceptional cases, finance is more
>an instrument than a driving force. What does financial capital *want*?
>I know it has needs and desires, but they are the product of the rules
>of the game, not of a *will*.>
>
>You seem to be saying that finance capital JUST IS, therefore we should
>just take it for granted, and not give it importance or centrality in
>being the cause of imperialism.
No, Julien is not saying that. He's making a rather Marxian point in a
rather Marxian way, I think. Finance is no independent variable. It
depends alright! And recent trends might have given it the appearance of
concerted will, but it's just doing what it must. Everyone must behave as
if they believe they are in a historically unprecedented moment - they must
pretend that the efficiencies offered by IT can do what Taylorism, the
railroad, automobiles, and electricity ultimately proved they could not do.
They must behave as if IT can do something other than impoverish, fragment
and antagonise everone outside the IT-agglomerated core. They must behave
as if they are not producing an excess capacity in the core and an
underconsumption in the periphery. They must behave as if it doesn't matter
where money is invested, and where it is not invested. They must behave as
if it doesn't matter that even a tank of 'correction'-magnitude would be
enough to create a chain reaction of residential bankruptcies and
concomitant institutional write-offs. They must behave as if they believe
there's no problem with moot productivity and profit projections in sectors
where quantification becomes ever more difficult. They must behave as if
they believe the future will be so different from the centuries of
capitalism that have preceded it that the US current account deficit will
prove not to be of structural significance, that a high dollar will not
exacerbate that deficit, and that inflation can be kept at bay amidst tight
domestic labour markets, residential splurges and dodgy productivity
projections. I don't think they do believe it. Not most of them. But to
act as if they don't is to evacuate the best game in town before it has
stopped proffering its largesse. Ya gotta be a George Soros to show
restraint like that without watching your clients take a walk..
><No. Central economy are not managers, only overseers. They have *very*
>important powers, but they are very few and limited. They have nothing
>to say about specifics of the real economy even if they sometimes give
>their often idiotic opinions. They are also not autocratic rulers of
>their "empire"........>
>
>Once again, you seem to want to dismiss the financial sector in the
>imperialist First World countries as having any real impact on anything,
>let alone what these economic (and political, also) policies that they
>issue, actually do to the Third World.
Big finance has an impact, sure, but its hegemonic centrality is its very
problem. The mad dash for 'shareholder value' forces CEOs to abandon
frictionless industrial relations, short-change their customers, inhibit
future flexibility, cook their books, scimp on research and development,
give away control of their strategic information, invest in buy-backs and
other stocks rather than in capital equipment, and thus become dependent on
a finance sector whose future they threaten at every turn.
>Imperialism to you... remains the bully in the back alley pummelling
>someone smaller. But imperialism is more than that. I just
>posted an article on another list, about how the main Guatemalan
>business group had confesssed that 250,000 jobs were lost in that
>country of 12,000,000, the last year alone. That is imperialism.
>Or do you just think that there is some sort of defective gene in
>Guatemalans? It is also hunger and disease for a lot of people.
It doesn't suit the economy to impoverish whole populations. And the kind
of jobless growth we are seeing in much of SE Asia and Latin America is, I
submit, a Keynesian nightmare in the making.
>And to my previous note that......
>'The militarism that is promoted throughout the world by First World
>neo-imperialism, has led to the military being the most destructive
>force ecologically on the planet.'
>
>Julien replys
><We want the facts! And the criterion used to grade different
>destructive forces. Give them or be hanged by the people!>
>
>Julien, I'm almost at a loss here with you. I know that you are not a
>marxist, and that many differences we have in opinions are due to this.
>But this is just pure basic understanding of the ecological impact of
>the military on the environment. You don't have it.
Now, Tony! It's never good practice to throw that ol' claim around.
Nothing Julien says here disqualifies him as a Marxist! (Unless, perhaps,
if you equate Marxism with an abiding adherence to Lenin's 80-odd year-old
thoughts on imperialism). And it wouldn't matter if it did. And you're
making a VERY big claim here, comrade! Sure, there are many instances of
militarist eco-destruction (Yugoslavia, Iraq, Viecques, Murmansk,
Vladivostok. Muroroa Atol, Kiribati and Vietnam come to mind at once, for
instance), but the relationship between prevailing farming practices and
defoliation, salination, soil loss and water usage strike me as a most
formidable contributor to ecological destruction. So I'm with Julien, tell
us more!
>But talking about the reasons for war, defining
>imperialism in its realities rather than the media imagery of it, and
>discussing military impact on environment, surely do not qualify in that
>category.
No-one's saying they're irrelevant, Tony. Just arguing about the relations
between the constituents of the particular mode/s of imperialism in train
today. The Grotian neoliberalism which has characterised the last twenty
years has looked more Kautskyan than Leninist, I reckon. Conceivably,
structures are in place (a wallowing but powerful Japan, a socially volatile
Russia, an unpredictable China and the economic bloc in Europe) that could
bring us a more Leninist formation at the first sign of a crisis.
I don't reckon we'll have to wait long to find out, anyway. Which is a
pity, as the left is way underdeveloped for a scenario the fascistic far
right has often proven itself extremely adept at exploiting.
Cheers,
Rob.
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