On 3/10/07, Jim Devine <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Since the Paris Commune, there have been at least three moments when
> the possibility of transition to socialism was on the political
> horizon: the Spanish Civil War, France of 1968, and the Meidner Plan.
> Two of them were anarchists in fact (in Spain) or spirit (France) --
> both held back by the largest current of the Marxist tradition then --
> and the last was social democratic.
some might deny that the CPs were truly Marxist. In fact, I feel that
way. (NB: I will not defend this proposition, since it gets into a
silly debate about what "true Marxism" is.)
> So, when and where movements
> existed in the West to which intellectuals could attach themselves,
> Marxism as understood by many Marxists then ironically played the role
> of a brake or had a little role to play. Could it be because many
> Marxists by then had ceased to think about transition to socialism in
> the North (while still hoping for it in the South)?
I don't know. Unfortunately, empiricism is usually the dominant
vision, so when the actual movement shuts down or bureaucratizes, then
the empiricists say "it can't happen here."
There are things that are theoretically possible, really happen
sometimes, but are nonetheless very unlikely: e.g., winning big money
in lottery. Recognizing that doesn't make one an empiricist.
Taking a sober look at the USA, we have to also admit that we are
beginning with less than zero. Vehicles-- a center-left electoral
party and trade unions -- through which leftists traditionally worked
toward social democracy in other countries are actively opposed to
social democracy here, to say nothing of anything like socialism.
The working class people mostly aren't members of unions, and even
those who are union members are seldom involved in any politics
through their unions, except maybe contract bargaining, and political
parties here are mainly fund-raising and PR machines, which simply
seek to get the votes of workers, without getting them involved in any
party activity.
What sort of political activity makes sense in this context?
Yoshie:
> I basically wish to highlight the fact that the entire theoretical
> debates on such question petered out (without making judgement about
> this or that participant's theory in the debates); and in a similar
> fashion, the Marxist/socialist feminist debate on domestic labor
> faded.
could it be that the discussion of domestic labor was (a) solved or
(b) deemed to be unimportant?
In this case, as in the other, the debate died because the political
context of the debate -- women's movement in which left-wing women had
a niche in this case -- disappeared.
The domestic labor debate was actually not so much a debate on
domestic labor as one on gender and social reproduction. Seen this
way, the question remains. Even if you look at socialist and social
democratic countries, care-giving labor is still mainly performed by
women, at home or through welfare-state institutions or both. It is
now also a question of migrant labor, as the North ages rapidly, and
women from the South migrate here to take care of native-born children
and old people and staff many service-industry jobs that meet some of
the needs of social reproduction. This aspect of the question was
raised again recently, for instance, by Barbara Ehrenreich in her
well-received Nickel and Dimed. And it should be also mentioned that
remittances from those migrant women from the South are huge, one of
the major factors in sustaining economies of countries like the
Philippines. So, this question is actually linked to the question of
imperialism, too,
On a separate note, one of the old demands of some feminists --
criticized as conservative by other feminists -- involved in the old
domestic labor debate, however, actually became a reality in
Venezuela: Article 88 of the Bolivarian Constitution states that "The
state recognizes work at home as an economic activity that creates
added value and produces social welfare and wealth. Housewives are
entitled to Social Security in accordance with law." If the old
debate had continued, this might have been one of the issues that
feminist women could have discussed.
> Marxists and other leftists have little to say about the political
> economy of Iran, Iraq, the Persian Gulf, the Middle East in general,
> etc. either, empirically or theoretically. MERIP used to carry
> Marxist takes on such questions, but it basically has gone in the
> direction of NACLA*, much more liberal, much more empiricist than
> before.
for relatively limited questions such as the political economy of
Iran, empiricism isn't all bad. You don't need much theory to figure
out that the mullahs rule there and use oil revenues for their own
benefit, allowing them to slowly (or in some cases rapidly) join the
capitalist class.
But, if you had been watching Iran in the 1960s and 1970s, would you
have said to yourself, "In Iran, it will be clerics who will lead a
revolution to overthrow the Shah's regime"? I doubt it. Clerics in
Iran were a category of people Gramsci would have called "traditional
intellectuals," the type that Marxists tended to think would (in the
event of social revolution) _follow_ either the bourgeoisie or the
working class, rather than _lead and subordinate_ them, as they
actually did in the Iranian Revolution. Imposing theory without
empirical studies doesn't help.
Also, in today's Iran, do clerics all belong to the same class, the
capitalist class in particular, or are clerics a professional category
whose members belong to different classes? Some clerical members of
Iran's power elite are obviously capitalists: Rafsanjani is the best
example. But are the rest? Khomeini, for instance, had power, but
was he involved in surplus value production as a capitalist? If so,
how? What of Khamenei, and members of the Guardian Council and the
Assembly of Experts today? Do they just have power or do they also
have a lot of personal wealth? If the latter, how much? Do they gain
wealth as Soviet power elites did, through control of the state and
parastate instituttions, or as capitalists directly involved in
production or finance? What about clerics who do not have any
positions of power in the state? What class do they belong to? We
can't know these things without studying them.
The same thing should be said about other societies in the Middle
East. What do class structures look like in the Gulf states, Egypt,
Jordan, Syria, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, Yemen, Sudan, Somalia,
Afghanistan, Pakistan, etc., etc.?
And how are their economies integrated into global economy respectively?
Is there a good theory of imperialism today, which is strongly focused
on the Middle East, that takes into account solid empirical studies of
economies and class structures of these societies? I have yet to find
one.
--
Yoshie
<http://montages.blogspot.com/>
<http://mrzine.org>
<http://monthlyreview.org/>
