Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Why are Democrats okay with losing? | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 2018/11/10 16:17, Louis Proyect wrote: ... There is no way for capitalism to resolve these contradictions. It took WWII to create a new footing for the expanded accumulation of capital. The underlying dynamic is toward a new world war that will not lead to a new long wave in a new Kondratiev wave but a global heap of radioactive rubble instead. There is a tendency towards overaccumulation, as you describe, based on the rising organic composition of capital - and then there is devalorisation (including WWII's massive industrial destruction in Europe and Japan), which occasionally keeps the system in check by wiping out the least productive units. But the overall problem leaks into the financial sector, generating much higher ratios of debt and other forms of fictitious capital. Usually there's some sort of fight-back against devalorisation, and sometimes, as you point out in the U.S. steel industry in the 1930s, that involves cross-class alliances. But mainly the devaluation is visited upon poor and working people, women, the environment and other sites where resistance has not been well enough coordinated. (It took 3 years for Occupy to emerge from the global heap of real estate and student-debt rubble, for instance.) So has anyone in our circuits been researching - and most importantly, organizing against - devaluation? (I'm writing about it now in the context of the degrowth movement's surprising lack of engagement - advice is welcome.) _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Why are Democrats okay with losing? | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Some more or less cosmic thoughts: Mike Meeropol here responds to Louis Proyect's research essentially illustrating how the Dem Party honchos need not be responsive to public outcry, even unfavorable electoral outcomes, aside from entertaining measures culminating in identitarian, cosmetic or cultural change which might be convenient or not unduly disruptive to capital, and are not going to permit any reform of the party, any meaningful reform in the direction of public need; pointing to how they can live with defeat at the polls because whatever, they're doing what their keepers want them to do, they're just doing their job, and they'll be rewarded accordingly. What are some of the components of this historical but nonetheless increasingly blatant corruption? They're certainly OK with repression, that's part of their shtick. They're OK with corporate welfare and perks, subsidy, tax reduction, amortization and depreciation allowances and givebacks and reciprocal heaping emoluments at taxpayer expense. They're reaping enormous bribes in the form of campaign contributions on the well-worn sluice ramps of patronage, and they're profiting enormously whether they remain in or out of office. They have lavish prospects for life following long careers in protected sinecures, after their incumbencies functioning as richly rewarded lobbyists with a network and pipeline to the Congress and intimate experience, in and through legislative committees and staff liaison, with the vast government bureaucratic maize, as transnational corporate board members and management functionaries, as government policy wonks in well-funded corporate think tanks or positions in "higher education," or as members of commissions and administrative posts. As Howie Klein has said, and it hardly needs saying I guess, at least two thirds of Democrats successful in the midterms - that's at least - are Blue Dog or New Dem right wing ideologues, quite content to make their beds in a Trump world. The fortunes of politicians rise or fall - patronage and government funds distribution to their districts, committee assignments, junkets, inside information on profitable investment, leadership roles, power - with how well they perform as functionaries, personifications of capital, in the legislative and administrative instruments of social control guided by the interests of capital expansion. So any progressive reform or change within the system? Fageddit. This is not in the least reductive reasoning; it's amply verified. It's come as a realization all too slowly for good use in my case. It's also becoming more obvious that presidents or prime ministers, cabinet members, legislatures, judicial systems, bureaucracies, are increasingly ineffectual as even nominally independent bodies or personages in forming policy in a context of increasing disparities of wealth, power, concentration, centralization, and the over all need for concerted responsiveness to the requirement of capital profitability. Although powerful transnational capital has no apparent vision of how to sustain profitability either, that's the most vulnerable Achilles heel, but they certainly call the shots. Mike here hews to what he sees as central to our longer-term interests, the means of opposition to the palpably plain coming crunch of authoritarian rule. With both hands tied behind our backs unless resistance is global? Because capital certainly is global, becoming more so, increasingly free to slosh around everywhere mindless of larger consequences in search of profitable returns and competition for market share, while lowering costs through AI, automation, offshoring and wasteful consumption of dwindling planetary resources and survivable climate. Through restrictive labor legislation, increased repressive militarization of domestic and global enforcement, immigration control, etc. compelling global labor to work where they're cheapest and of most advantage to capital. While keeping the working class of the world off balance, disorganized, spatially separated, fractious and divided. And capital remaining increasingly free to manipulate, control, smash or ignore governments of smaller nation-states, whose sovereignty is diminishing exponentially in the face of control by treaty law based on assumptions of "comparative advantage" and capital-directed bodies of international finance and regulation. Or arms supply to those more compliant, exchange restrictions and tariffs, proxy wars or outright invasion for those who are not. So simply put, and as Mike and anyone else among us realizes well, we
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Why are Democrats okay with losing? | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * In the end, Mike, I don't think it's a matter of the dangers of Trump and "Trumpism," but the effectiveness and seriousness of the Democratic Party in opposing it. I'm sure we're all agreed that the Democrats coauthored what we all agree to be the curse of neo-liberalism and of plaguing the planet with more and more intense wars. I think we are also agree that neither earned any praise for directly addressing the persistence of systemic racism and sexism. They never do without a massive and insistent pressure from the people. The key question is what have the Democrats done over the last half century to justify our seeing them as a viable vehicle for opposing Trump. The record certainly indicates that they were utterly incapable of thwarting the Trump ascendancy, a task rather easier than unseating an established wrong. Indeed, they boasted that they would not hold Bush to account for his WMD lies, something that the most minimal requirement of their oaths of office required. But, then again, they didn't even investigate Reagan's criminal activities with any seriousness and they dropped their investigation of Nixon's activities once he decided to leave office. Can you provide a single case of the Democratic party nationally accomplishing something for the laboring people of this country? (The nationalization of Romneycare--the implementation of Nixon's old proposal doesn't count.) And, if you can't do that, give me one real reason to justify any faith in a party that has embraces and celebrates the same ideology and practice of the Republicans--from trickle down economics to war drones--and hasn't really even felt much of an impulse to do anything substantive for us since the civil rights legislation of the middle 1960s . . . half century ago. Comradely, Mark L. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Why are Democrats okay with losing? | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * touche, Mark (imagine the accent ague!) --- However, the communist members of the resistance had an ally in Charles DeGaulle --- the Democrats are awful (see my book attacking Clinton --) --- most of us spent years yelling "Hey Hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today!" --- but they are not Vichy --- WAS it a mistake to push McGovern to victory in the Democratic primaries and then fight like hell for his election in order to end the US imperial war in Indochina? So lets get to the present -- A Democratic House can make sure Trump does not privatize Medicare and/or Social Security --- [if Clinton had attempted to do that absent the impeachment effort, we all should have opposed it vigorously] --- and can embarass Trump's lackeys in the cabinet --- and maybe increase consciousness --- (sorry again to resort to history -- but it was hearings by Fulbright that helped spread the message of the anti-war movement). Let's focus on the main issue that divides me from Louis and Mark --- is the threat of TRUMPISM as serious as I think it is?? IS a broad coalition that includes many Dems the way to BLUNT it (if not stop it altogether)? MARK: :In the end, though, Mike's presented no real evidence for this fanciful interpretation of WWII (which really fleshed out the American empire), MIKE:Don'[t get your point. All I said was that Stalin accepted an alliance of convenience with Roosevelt and Churchill --- that did not change the fact that Roosevelt and Churchill were imperialists and capitalists -- it just meant that Hitler was a bigger threat --- that was not an interpretation of WW II -- it was just a statement of fact MARK: . . Because the Democrats have changed very fundamentally . . .according to the Democratic movers and shakers themselves. This is oftenseen as a superficial shift to the right, but it reflects a series of deliberate structural changes in the character of the party to promulgate anew strategy. MIKE: BOTH POST WWII strategies were horrible -- first we had the welfare warfare state otherwise known as "military Keynesianism" which got us Korea, Vietnam and the Cuban Missile Crisis (Guatemala, Iran, the Bay of Pigs) --- then beginning in 1980 we had the rise of neo-liberalism that the DEMS surrendered to (shameless plug, that's the title of my book!) with Clinton And Obama whether he was well-meaning or not failed miserably to confront neo-liberalism and our imperial ambitions in the world -- I GET ALL THAT -- that's why the question boils down to how great a threat to us and the planet is TRUMPISM? _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Why are Democrats okay with losing? | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Mike's position reminds me of the story I've told before--brace yourself, you're going to hear it again--about when I asked a great uncle why he voted Republican. He told me about his grandfather and Abraham Lincoln and how, in his youth, he got inspired by Teddy Roosevelt. Well, I was just a wee sprout at the time, but knew that Abe Lincoln was dead about ninety years before and Teddy Roosevelt had almost forty years before. Nowadays, every time I have a serious discussion with someone who thinks we should vote Democratic, they tell me about FDR, a mere eighty years ago or maybe LBJ half a century in the rear view mirror. In the end, though, Mike's presented no real evidence for this fanciful interpretation of WWII (which really fleshed out the American empire), much less addressing the situation we face right now. several generations later. . . . Because the Democrats have changed very fundamentally . . . according to the Democratic movers and shakers themselves. This is often seen as a superficial shift to the right, but it reflects a series of deliberate structural changes in the character of the party to promulgate a new strategy. Cheers, Mark L. PS: As to whether that pits us against "the resistance" . . . .well, let me take a page from Mike's approach and go back to WWII. If a French person grumbles about the German occupation but supported the Vichy as a "lesser evil," would you take that as the position of "the resistance"? _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Why are Democrats okay with losing? | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 11/10/18 8:58 AM, Michael Meeropol wrote: The leadership can be pushed BACK towards a New Deal style set of policies --- but just as important -- they can be dragged kicking and screaming into an anti-Trump coalition. Even if Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, et al became convinced that a new New Deal was necessary, it is beyond the capability of American capitalism to produce one. In the 1930s, the bourgeoisie was heavily invested in manufacturing. Even if FDR was neutral between the ultraright, lawbreaking Little Steel bosses and the workers trying to build a union, both classes involved in the confrontation accepted the need to sustain steel, auto, etc. through a class alliance. Not long after the strike was broken, the steel union was recognized by the bosses in order to keep the steel mills going during WWII. Despite Trump's rhetoric, there is little interest in making the USA a manufacturing powerhouse today. India, China and other former Third World nations can produce it cheaper--plus, high technology, finance, etc. produce bigger profits. What is driving this? Mostly, the liberal press attributes it to corporate greed as if the Koch brothers need to be visited by Jacob Marley's ghost in order to give their benediction to a public works program (of course, understanding that the WPA had zero to do with ending the Depression.) As Harry Shutt points out in "The Trouble with Capitalism," a conspicuous feature of industrialized economies from the early 1980s has been: "the tendency of established companies, in the service sector as well as manufacturing, to regard the application of cost-cutting new technology to their existing operations (without necessarily expanding capacity) as one of the most profitable ways reinvest their accumulating profits. This has effectively turned on its head one of the most sacred assumptions of post-war political economy, namely that increased investment has a positive impact on employment (a still cherished shibboleth of the British Labour Party and trade unions). At the same time the resulting process of corporate 'downsizing' reinforced a gathering tendency on the part of governments quietly to abandon their commitment to full employment as an overriding goal of public policy." "The upshot of these tendencies has been a further increase in joblessness since the early 1980s, giving rise (particularly in Europe) to the phenomenon of 'jobless growth'. This has meant that, taking the 1974-1994 period as a whole, there has been negligible growth in the numbers of employed people in the countries of the European Union at a time when the level of economic activity (GDP) has expanded significantly, albeit at a much slower rate than in the 1950s and 1960s. Indeed in the most extreme case, that of Spain, employment actually fell by over 8 per cent over the period as a whole, at a time when the economy virtually doubled in size." There is no way for capitalism to resolve these contradictions. It took WWII to create a new footing for the expanded accumulation of capital. The underlying dynamic is toward a new world war that will not lead to a new long wave in a new Kondratiev wave but a global heap of radioactive rubble instead. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] [pen-l] Why are Democrats okay with losing? | Louis Proyect: The Unrepentant Marxist
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Sorry to once again restate my "the fascists are coming" wolf-cry --- but of course I really do believe it. The Democratic Party got a HIGHER margin over the Republicans than the Republicans did over the DEMS in the 2010 midterms -- that is a WAVE of voters no matter how much it was blunted by the Senate map and gerrymandering -- The leadership can be pushed BACK towards a New Deal style set of policies --- but just as important -- they can be dragged kicking and screaming into an anti-Trump coalition. There's a great line from the song "Deliver the Goods" (probably written by Woody Guthrie) about World War II "Now me and my boss, we never did agree If a thing helped him, then it didn['t help me! But when a burglar tries to bust in to your house You stop fighting with the Landlord and throw him out!" The Soviet Union united with the United States to fight Hitler after Pearl Harbor --- the anti-imperialist anti-war activists were in coalition with Democrats -- even "war criminals for peace" --- in the early 1970s as Congress gave the coup de grace to Nixon and FOrd's hope to keep propping up "South Vietnam" --- I think we just guarantee our irrelevance if we keep reminding ourselves how rotten the Dems are ... that's not where the people of the resistance are --- Mike _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
