One of the motivations in scheduling a discussion of "crisis theory"
in this online introduction to Marxism class is that it gave me an
excuse to read Rick Kuhn's new biography "Henryk Grossman and the
Recovery of Marxism". I have heard Grossman's name bandied about on
various leftwing mailing lists for the past 10 years and was curious
to see what the buzz was about. Kuhn's book has been a rewarding
experience both in terms of its scholarly treatment of a somewhat
neglected figure and as an important piece of the jigsaw puzzle of
capitalist crisis.
This puzzle is of course all the more compelling given the events of
the past few months. A Lexis-Nexis search on "1929? for articles
within the last 3 months yields 992 hits! Here's something from one
right off the top:
How will new Fed chairman Ben Bernanke's handling of the
current crisis compare to Greenspan's record? The big worry is that
the collapse in share prices has been accompanied by a banking
crisis. With hundreds of billions of sub-prime mortgage losses yet to
surface, most banks have given up lending to one another. This has
inevitably invited comparisons with what happened between 1929 and 1933.
As against that, Bernanke has cut US interest rates four
times since last September. They now stand at just 3.5 per cent as
against 5.25 per cent when the crisis first began. And the Fed isn't
done cutting yet, with a further rate cut, possibly to three per
cent, likely before the end of the month. While there is a chance
that things could go terribly, horribly wrong, the likelihood is that
cheaper money will limit the effects of any economic downturn.
Irish Independent, January 26, 2008
Rick Kuhn has been devoted to re-establishing Grossman's reputation
since 1993. His preface gives reasons why. Part of it was personal.
Like Grossman, Kuhn's Jewish parents had to flee Nazi-controlled
territory in 1938 and 1939. (Grossman made it out of Europe safely,
but his wife, son and many other relatives were killed by the Nazis.)
But the main reason was what Grossman had to contribute on Marxist
economics, which was of great importance to Kuhn's peers, including
Anwar Shaikh, whose "excellent survey of Marxist crisis theory
provided a sympathetic account of Grossman's position." This survey
of course was the text around which I focused my first post on this topic.
One of Kuhn's first forays into the area of Grossman studies appeared
in the Summer 1995 edition of Science and Society. It was titled
"Capitalism's collapse: Henryk Grossman's Marxism". The second
paragraph is about as key to the discussion that we have been having
on this topic as anything I have read anywhere:
Capitalism does many horrible things to people. It generates
radical differences in income and wealth, with starvation on one side
and immense luxury on the other. It alienates us from each other, and
from our natural capacities for work and even for sexual pleasure.
The system reproduces itself by dividing humanity along arbitrary
lines of nation, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation. Its
wars periodically massacre huge numbers of people. All of these
provide bases for socialist critiques of the capitalist mode of
production. But if capitalism can go on forever, increasing the
production of wealth all the time, then in principal economic
problems, at least, could either be overcome through working-class
action to reallocate wealth or ameliorated into unpleasant but
bearable irritants. In these circumstances, Grossmann argues, the
working class could just as easily reconcile itself with capitalism
as voluntaristically attempt to realize socialism.
full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/an-introduction-to-henryk-grossman/
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