[Marxism-Thaxis] Alain Badiou in _New Left Review_ on The Communist Hypothesis
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2008-March/024922.html http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=articleview=2705 What is the communist hypothesis? In its generic sense, given in its canonic * Manifesto*, 'communist' means, first, that the logic of class-the fundamental subordination of labour to a dominant class, the arrangement that has persisted since Antiquity-is not inevitable; it can be overcome. The communist hypothesis is that a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labour. The private appropriation of massive fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society, will no longer appear a necessity: a long process of reorganization based on a free association of producers will see it withering away. 'Communism' as such denotes only this very general set of intellectual representations. It is what Kant called an Idea, with a regulatory function, rather than a programme. It is foolish to call such communist principles utopian; in the sense that I have defined them here they are intellectual patterns, always actualized in a different fashion. As a pure Idea of equality, the communist hypothesis has no doubt existed since the beginnings of the state. As soon as mass action opposes state coercion in the name of egalitarian justice, rudiments or fragments of the hypothesis start to appear. Popular revolts-the slaves led by Spartacus, the peasants led by Müntzer-might be identified as practical examples of this 'communist invariant'. With the French Revolution, the communist hypothesis then inaugurates the epoch of political modernity. What remains is to determine the point at which we now find ourselves in the history of the communist hypothesis. A fresco of the modern period would show two great sequences in its development, with a forty-year gap between them. The first is that of the setting in place of the communist hypothesis; the second, of preliminary attempts at its realization. The first sequence runs from the French Revolution to the Paris Commune; let us say, 1792 to 1871. It links the popular mass movement to the seizure of power, through the insurrectional overthrow of the existing order; this revolution will abolish the old forms of society and install 'the community of equals'. In the course of the century, the formless popular movement made up of townsfolk, artisans and students came increasingly under the leadership of the working class. The sequence culminated in the striking novelty-and radical defeat-of the Paris Commune. For the Commune demonstrated both the extraordinary energy of this combination of popular movement, working-class leadership and armed insurrection, and its limits: the *communards* could neither establish the revolution on a national footing nor defend it against the foreign-backed forces of the counter-revolution. The second sequence of the communist hypothesis runs from 1917 to 1976: from the Bolshevik Revolution to the end of the Cultural Revolution and the militant upsurge throughout the world during the years 1966-75. It was dominated by the question: how to win? How to hold out-unlike the Paris Commune-against the armed reaction of the possessing classes; how to organize the new power so as to protect it against the onslaught of its enemies? It was no longer a question of formulating and testing the communist hypothesis, but of realizing it: what the 19th century had dreamt, the 20th would accomplish. The obsession with victory, centred around questions of organization, found its principal expression in the 'iron discipline' of the communist party-the characteristic construction of the second sequence of the hypothesis. The party effectively solved the question inherited from the first sequence: the revolution prevailed, either through insurrection or prolonged popular war, in Russia, China, Czechoslovakia, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and succeeded in establishing a new order. But the second sequence in turn created a further problem, which it could not solve using [...] Full: http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=articleview=2705 ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
Re: [Marxism-Thaxis] Alain Badiou in _New Left Review_ on The Communist Hypothesis
Can't access the full article, but hopefully it is not as vacuous as this extract. At 12:34 PM 3/10/2008, Charles Brown wrote: Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64Content-Disposition: inlinehttp://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2008-March/024922.html http://www.newleftreview.org/[EMAIL PROTECTED] What is the communist hypothesis? In its generic sense, given in its canonic * Manifesto*, 'communist' means, first, that the logic of class-the fundamental subordination of labour to a dominant class, the arrangement that has persisted since Antiquity-is not inevitable; it can be overcome. The communist hypothesis is that a different collective organization is practicable, one that will eliminate the inequality of wealth and even the division of labour. The private appropriation of massive fortunes and their transmission by inheritance will disappear. The existence of a coercive state, separate from civil society, will no longer appear a necessity: a long process of reorganization based on a free association of producers will see it withering away. 'Communism' as such denotes only this very general set of intellectual representations. It is what Kant called an Idea, with a regulatory function, rather than a programme. It is foolish to call such communist principles utopian; in the sense that I have defined them here they are intellectual patterns, always actualized in a different fashion. As a pure Idea of equality, the communist hypothesis has no doubt existed since the beginnings of the state. As soon as mass action opposes state coercion in the name of egalitarian justice, rudiments or fragments of the hypothesis start to appear. Popular revolts-the slaves led by Spartacus, the peasants led by Müntzer-might be identified as practical examples of this 'communist invariant'. With the French Revolution, the communist hypothesis then inaugurates the epoch of political modernity. What remains is to determine the point at which we now find ourselves in the history of the communist hypothesis. A fresco of the modern period would show two great sequences in its development, with a forty-year gap between them. The first is that of the setting in place of the communist hypothesis; the second, of preliminary attempts at its realization. The first sequence runs from the French Revolution to the Paris Commune; let us say, 1792 to 1871. It links the popular mass movement to the seizure of power, through the insurrectional overthrow of the existing order; this revolution will abolish the old forms of society and install 'the community of equals'. In the course of the century, the formless popular movement made up of townsfolk, artisans and students came increasingly under the leadership of the working class. The sequence culminated in the striking novelty-and radical defeat-of the Paris Commune. For the Commune demonstrated both the extraordinary energy of this combination of popular movement, working-class leadership and armed insurrection, and its limits: the *communards* could neither establish the revolution on a national footing nor defend it against the foreign-backed forces of the counter-revolution. The second sequence of the communist hypothesis runs from 1917 to 1976: from the Bolshevik Revolution to the end of the Cultural Revolution and the militant upsurge throughout the world during the years 1966-75. It was dominated by the question: how to [EMAIL PROTECTED] the Paris Commune-against the armed reaction of the possessing classes; how to organize the new power so as to protect it against the onslaught of its enemies] was no longer a question of formulating and testing the communist hypothesis, but of realizing it: what the 19th century had dreamt, the 20th would accomplish. The obsession with victory, centred around questions of organization, found its principal expression in the 'iron discipline' of the communist party-the characteristic construction of the second sequence of the hypothesis. The party effectively solved the question inherited from the first sequence: the revolution prevailed, either through insurrection or prolonged popular war, in Russia, China, Czechoslovakia, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, and succeeded in establishing a new order. But the second sequence in turn created a further problem, which it could not solve using [...] Full: http://www.newleftreview.org/YÙOX\XÛIY]ÏLÌ H ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] Dialectical Materialism
Haines Brown --http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2008-March/024942.html-- At the risk of furthering a side thread, allow me to reply to Carrol briefly. Carrol writes: may I suggest that dialectics not be invoked befrore the 6000th word, at a minimum, of your document. Why? It seems to me that dialectical materialism is a far more dodgy term than dialectic. Whatever one's understanding dialectics, I doubt that they should be invoked in ordinary conversation/writing on particular topics. As a rule of thumb may I suggest that dialectics not be invoked befrore the 6000th word, at a minimum, of your document. Well, to some extent I agree. If the term is not being used effectively, but only serves to add a politically correct tone to otherwise empty verbiage, then that is bad style, a put-off, and best avoided. Now, I wasn't sure what dodgy meant, and so had to look it up. There are two meanings that roughly are a) risky, b) deceptive. I don't think you quite meant either. I'll assume you meant something like vague or empty. Let's recall the meaning of dialectics. the application of logical principles to discursive reasoning. Usually it means discussion by dialogue as a method of scientific investigation. Etc. The term dialectics has to do with _epistemology_; it refers to statements about how we teach or learn the truth. Dialectical materialism, on the other hand, is an _ontological_ statement about the nature of things, the way the world works independently of us. If this distinction holds water, dialectics and dialectical materialism are completely unrelated terms. On the other hand, if it does not hold water, then at least dialectical materialism would seem to be a specification of the more general category of dialectics and, unlike dialectics, one that emerged at a particular time and place. Either way, dialects is a broader, more variable and therefore vaguer term than dialectical materialism. However, I have the feeling your objection is to the concept itself, not the use of the term, and if so it would be more productive to approach the issue directly. The overuse of jargon should be avoided, but is a common a practice hardly worth of your attack unless it was not this to which you object, but the concept to which the jargon points. To me, to say in the present environment that we should look at things dialectically is shorthand for saying that should be looking at them in terms of dialectical materialism. This is not a Hegelian discussion group. Such a recommendation is, in my mind, certainly valid, for, as I pointed out before, it amounts to the suggestion that we view things as processes (as a relation of causal powers and empirical constraints) and we also understand how development depends on the opposite process: the emergence of new potentials is necessarily tied to the emergence of new needs. Because this is a technical mouthful, it begs for appropriate jargon. I offer this example of the use of the jargon just in case I've misunderstood your objection and you need a target to shoot at. Haines Brown ___ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
[Marxism-Thaxis] The Obama Bubble: Why Wall Street Needs a Presidential Brand
Note critique of tech and housing bubbles. CB ^^^ http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_contenttask=viewid=548Itemid=1 The Obama Bubble: Why Wall Street Needs a Presidential Brand Wednesday, 05 March 2008 by Pam Martens Despite Barack Obama's claim that his campaign represents a mass movement of average folks, the initial core of his support was largely comprised of rich denizens of Wall Street. Why would the super wealthy want a percieved black populist to become the nation's chief executive officer? The Obama bubble was nurtured by Wall Street in order to have a friend in the White House when the captains of capital are made to face the legal consequences for deliberately creating current and past economic bubbles. Wall Street desperately needs a president who will sweep all the corruption and losses, would-be indictments, perp walks and prosecutions under the rug and get on with an unprecedented taxpayer bailout of Wall Street. Who better to sell this agenda to the millions of duped mortgage holders and foreclosed homeowners in minority communities across America than our first, beloved, black president of hope and change? The Obama Bubble: Why Wall Street Needs a Presidential Brand by Pam Martens This article originally appeared in the print edition of Counterpunch.org. We are asked to believe that those white executives at all the biggest Wall Street firms now want a black populist president because they crave a level playing field for the American people.” The Obama phenomenon has been likened to that of cults, celebrity groupies and Messiah worshipers. But what we're actually witnessing is Obama mania (as in tulip mania), the third and final bubble orchestrated and financed by the wonderful Wall Street folks who brought us the first two: the Nasdaq/tech bubble and a subprime-mortgage-in-every-pot bubble. To understand why Wall Street desperately needs this final bubble, we need to first review how the first two bubbles were orchestrated and why. In March of 2000, the Nasdaq stock market, hyped with spurious claims for startup tech and dot.com companies, reached a peak of over 5,000. Eight years later, it's trading in the 2,300 range and most of those companies no longer exist. From peak to trough, Nasdaq transferred over $4 trillion from the pockets of small mania-gripped investors to the wealthy and elite market manipulators. The highest monetary authority during those bubble days, Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve, consistently told us that the market was efficient and stock prices were being set by the judgment of millions of highly knowledgeable investors. Mr. Greenspan was the wind beneath the wings of a carefully orchestrated wealth transfer system known as pump and dump on Wall Street. As hundreds of court cases, internal emails, and insider testimony now confirm, this bubble was no naturally occurring phenomenon any more than the Obama bubble is. Nasdaq transferred over $4 trillion from the pockets of small mania-gripped investors to the wealthy and elite market manipulators. First, Wall Street firms issued knowingly false research reports to trumpet the growth prospects for the company and stock price; second, they lined up big institutional clients who were instructed how and when to buy at escalating prices to make the stock price skyrocket (laddering); third, the firms instructed the hundreds of thousands of stockbrokers serving the mom-and-pop market to advise their clients to sit still as the stock price flew to the moon or else the broker would have his commissions taken away (penalty bid). While the little folks' money served as a prop under prices, the wealthy elite on Wall Street and corporate insiders were allowed to sell at the top of the market (pump-and-dump wealth transfer). Why did people buy into this mania for brand new, untested companies when there is a basic caveat that most people in this country know, i.e., the majority of all new businesses fail? Common sense failed and mania prevailed because of massive hype pumped by big media, big public relations, and shielded from regulation by big law firms, all eager to collect their share of Wall Street's rigged cash cow. The current housing bubble bust is just a freshly minted version of Wall Street's real estate limited partnership frauds of the '80s, but on a grander scale. In the 1980s version, the firms packaged real estate into limited partnerships and peddled it as secure investments to moms and pops. The major underpinning of this wealth transfer mechanism was that regulators turned a blind eye to the fact that the investments were listed at the original face amount on the clients' brokerage statements long after they had lost most of their value. Today's real estate related securities (CDOs and SIVs) that are blowing up around the globe are simply the above scheme with more
