Robert L. Allen reviews Bill Mandel's new book
PENLers, Robert L. Allen reviews Bill Mandel's new book below. Seth Sandronsky From: William Mandel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: "\"[ACTIVIST]\"@mindspring.com" "[ACTIVIST]"@mindspring.com Subject: [Fwd: Review] Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 22:08:13 -0700 To be removed from list, e-mail "Opt Out." You may find of interest website www.BillMandel.net REVIEW IN THE BLACK SCHOLAR (Vol. 30, #1) BY ROBERT L. ALLEN, SENIOR EDITOR SAYING NO TO POWER: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel (Berkeley, CA: Creative Arts Book Co., 1999), 651 pp. $18.50, ISBN 0-88739-286-5 Reviewed by Robert L. Allen Bill Mandel is best known to many for his courageous and dramatic defiance of House Un-American Activities Committee witch-hunters during hearings in San Francisco in 1960 and his many years as a commentator on the Soviet Union on Berkeley radio station KPFA. Less well known, but revealed in this autobiography is his decades-long involvement in anti-racist struggles such as his defense of Angelo Herndon, Paul Robeson, the Martinsville Seven, W.E.B. Du Bois and, most recently, Mumia Abu Jamal. A richly detailed, engaging, and instructive book, Saying No to Power is the story of a man whose pen and voice have been powerful weapons in the fight against injustice. Mandel was born into an immigrant Jewish family in New York's Lower East Side in 1917. The family's politics were reflected in the fact that they named their baby William Marx Mandel. As a youth Mandel joined the Young Pioneers, a Communist youth group, and he wrote articles for its newspaper. His introduction to the realities of racism occurred in 1931 when he read in the Daily Worker about the Scottsboro Boys case, in which nine black youths were unjustly convicted on charges of raping two white girls in Scottsboro, Alabama. Subsequently he was introduced to life in the Soviet Union when his father moved the family there for a year after accepting a job as a civil engineer. Young Bill studied Russian and took courses at Moscow University. He was impressed by the University's enrollment of mostly working-class men and women as well as members of ethnic minorities, and the students' commitment to building a new egalitarian socialist society. His chapter on Moscow University is entitled "Affirmative Action University." Returning to New York his family settled in Washington Heights and Mandel enrolled at the City College of New York. He was expelled in less than a year for questioning the administration's calling of police to break up a student meeting. The expulsion led him to enroll in the Communist Party's Workers' School and later become a full-time activist and literature vendor for the Party It was in this work that he met and married his life partner, Tanya. The CP was strongly committed to interracial working-class unity with the result that Mandel found himself assigned to assist a strike by laundry workers, most of whom were black women. He also became involved in organizing support for Angelo Herndon, a militant black worker who was indicted on insurrection charges in Georgia for leading an interracial demonstration of workers. A high point for Mandel was being sent by the Party in 1938 to organize among black and white rubber workers in Akron Ohio. The CP was a strong presence in the labor movement and Mandel saw the power of interracial labor solidarity. In need of a job during World War II, Mandels fluency in the Russian language got him hired by United Press as their resident Russian specialist, launching his long career as an expert on Soviet affairs. But his commitment to Marxism would deny him mainstream acceptance. Ironically, within a few years Mandel would be voicing concerns about the lack of democracy in the Soviet and American Communist Parties, doubts that would eventually lead him to quit the CPUSA in 1957. One of the most harrowing sections of the book concerns the so-called "Peekskill Riot" in 1949 when a white racist mob, with the collusion of local police, brutally attacked an interracial audience attending an open-air concert near the town of Peekskill, NY, featuring Paul Robeson. Hundreds of people were severely beaten and their cars pelted with stones as the police stood by. Many were trapped at the concert site. Mandel organized a group of 16 drivers to return to the site to aid any who might still be there. In December 1949 Mandel was a panelist with W.E.B. Du Bois at the Congress on American-Soviet Relations. The next year Du Bois headed the American Labor Partys ticket as candidate for U.S. Senator. Mandel was on the same ticket as candidate for Congress. Du Boiss support for the Stockholm Peace Pledge got him indicted by the federal government as an unregistered foreign agent. Of course, Mandel strongly defended Du Bois. However, his less well known but more material contribution to Du Boiss well-being was
RE: Krugman Watch: Social Security
I doubt it, but this was a particularly well-done column.
mbs
today's column [May 17, 2000] is a case where PK is accurate, applying
economic logic where it's appropriate (criticizing George W. Bush's
proposal to put Social Security dollars into the stock market. This is a
big improvement over trying to prove that he's superior to all
those folks
who disagree with him ("What a Hack") or waving the
we-hate-the-French flag
or endorsing PNTR with China for merely rhetorical reasons. We can hope
that he's turned over a new leaf, favoring substance over style...
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Re: Marx and Dictatorship
There are clearly two traditions in _Marxism_, but Marx himself fits only the first Marx that Brad describes. Hal Draper's book on Marx's political writings shows this very clearly. Draper also has a useful little essay, "the Two Souls of Socialism," which distinguishes between the two traditions in Marxism and in socialism in general. There's socialism from above (Stalinism, social democracy, most utopians) and socialism from below, which is summarized by Marx's slogan that socialism can only be won by the working class itself. Even if the textual evidence says that Marx fits only the first tradition, one could still argue that the practical implications of his ideas are dictatorial. Look at what he says in the Manifesto: "The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State...1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes...3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5.Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State6. Centralisation of the means of communication..." Draper also argues that during the period that Marx wrote, the word "dictatorship" had a different meaning than it does today. Meanings change over time, just as the phrase "the dictatorship of the proletariat" has taken on the meaning of "the dictatorship for, or in the name of, the proletariat" or "the dictatorship over the proletariat" (as a result of the Soviet and Chinese experiences). No, it took that meaning precisely because the practical consequences of a "dictatorship *of* the proletariat" are "dictatorship *over* the proletariat". As Bakunin correctly said "of the dictatorship", it is "a lie which covers up a despotism of a governing minority, all the more dangerous in that it is an expression of a supposed people's will" "government of the great majority of popular masses by a privileged minority. But this minority will be composed of workers, say the Marxists" Marx's responses to Bakunin are utopian through and through, simply show how naive he was when it came to real politics.
Re: Marx's Daughter Son-In-Law was,Re: Marx and Malleability
Michael Perelman wrote: Tussy committed suicide. The daughter in Paris, Laura, died early of natural causes, I believe. Eleanor (Tussy) committed suicide in London in 1898. Laura married Paul Lafargue. She and her husband both committed suicide sometime after 1910. I have (long ago) read a letter Lenin wrote (I forget the recipient) in which he speaks of the shock the suicides caused in revolutionary circles. For information on all three sisters and their relations to the Paris Commune, see Yvonne Kapp, *Eleanor Marx*, Vol. 1, pages 125 forward. Eleanor's suicide had its grounds in clinical depression but many events, including the misdeeds of her companion, Aveling, triggered it. See Kapp, Vol. 2 for that. Laura's suicide, on the basis of what little I have read on it, is somewhat "suspect" in that it may reflect the way in which male dominance can/did affect even revolutionary women -- she may have committed suicide only because Paul's indirect pressure. During the time of the Commune Laura was preoccupied with the illness of one of her children. Paul Lafargue was in Paris part of the time but was not among those captured and executed. Carrol
Re: Re: Genderization
Hey, I'm not dogmatic about my Changism. Extract the rational kernel of left liberals when you can. CB Stephen E Philion [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/17/00 05:07PM If Charles is channelling Chang, he's doing a bad job of it. He forgot to add that we have nothing to fear from unemployment... Steve On Wed, 17 May 2000, Doug Henwood wrote: Charles Brown wrote: CB: Wasn't GDP socio-politically constructed in order to hoodwink the people ? You channeling Chang? No it wasn't constructed to hoodwink the people. It was constructed to get a picture of the macroeconomy. Planning for WW II accelerated the process in the U.S., but national income accounting in general has a long history that has little to do with hoodwinking the people. Doug
Marx's Daughter Son-In-Law was, Re: Marx andMalleability
Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/17/00 06:25PM "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: I think that it is worth keeping in mind that his own daughter and son-in- law were gunned down at le mur des Communards in the Pere Lachaise cemetary at the end of that sad episode, As I recall, they had a hairy time of it, but they lived to commit suicide together some decades later. __ CB: Krupskaya mentions this in her _Reminiscences_.
Re: Marx and Malleability
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/17/00 05:25PM Jim, Hi. I'm back, at least for a few weeks. Guess I'll side with Brad D. on this one, although only slightly. I agree that the first Marx is clearly the dominant one in most of his writings, the one for free development of people. But he did at certain points issue some rather sulphurous diatribes about the wretchedness of bourgeois democracy and also painted a not so nice picture of the dictatorship of the proletariat as well in certain passages, these getting picked up by good old Lenin to justify some of his more unpleasant Bolshevik excesses (See _The State and Revolution_ for example). __ CB: Bien venue back Comrade Barkley. What's your theory of democracy ( that's better than Marx's, young or old) ? The place to find the most heated of these is in Marx's writings on the Paris Commune in its aftermath. I think that it is worth keeping in mind that his own daughter and son-in- law were gunned down at le mur des Communards in the Pere Lachaise cemetary at the end of that sad episode, just across from where all les grands fromages of the French Communist Party are buried with their exaggerated socialist realist sculptures that are not nearly as cool as what one finds at the graves of Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, the lamentable Jim Morrison, or even Pere Abelard Barkley Rosser Professor of Economics MSC 0204 James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA 22807 USA tel: 540-568-3212 fax: 540-568-3010 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] website: http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb -
BLS Daily Report
BLS DAILY REPORT, WEDNESDAY, MAY 17, 2000: RELEASED TODAY: "College Enrollment and Work Activity of 1999 High School Graduates" indicates that 63 percent of the high school graduating class of 1999 was enrolled in colleges or universities in the fall. The college enrollment rate was somewhat lower than a year earlier and was well below its October 1997 record high of 67.0 percent. The over-the-year decline was much sharper among young women than among young men. These data come from the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly nationwide survey of about 50,000 households conducted for BLS by the Census Bureau. Questions relating to school enrollment and high school graduation status are asked each October in a supplement to the basic CPS. Falling energy prices offset other cost increases in April, so the seasonally adjusted CPI-U remained unchanged after a sharp 0.7 percent gain in March. The energy index fell 1.9 percent in April, its first decrease since last June. In both February and March, energy prices soared 4.9 percent. Despite the April decline, the cost of energy has risen 15 percent in the year ending in April. The increase was even more substantial during the 3 months ending in April, when energy costs jumped at a compounded annual rate of 33.9 percent. The CPI-U increased 3 percent in the year ending in April. Data from the Department of Energy indicate that May price increases might not be as benign as in April. BLS economist Patrick Jackman says. DOE shows increases in the cost of gasoline, and crude oil prices have been climbing. "The major concern is the pass-through of energy costs. But at some point, higher energy costs will show up in other components," Jackman said (Daily Labor Report, page D-5). __Consumer prices were unchanged in April and the construction of new homes rose, government figures showed today, suggesting that the economy was expanding with little or no inflation. Declines in the cost of gasoline, clothing, and air travel offset increases for medical care, food and housing last month. The so-called coarse index of the CPI, which excludes food and energy, rose 0.2 percent, half of March's 0.4 percent increase (Bloomberg News in The New York Times, page C25). __Retail prices were flat in April, the first time consumer prices were unchanged in more than a year. While the report helped ease some fears of renewed inflation, the data suggest there are still some causes for concern. Separately, housing starts rebounded in March after an unusually large decline a month earlier (The Wall Street Journal, page A2. The Journal's page 1 graph is of the CPI, 1999 to the present). The inflation-adjusted weekly earnings of most U.S. private workers rose 0.7 percent, seasonally adjusted, in April, after falling 0.5 percent in March, BLS reports. Hours worked increased by 0.3 percent and average hourly wages gained 0.4 percent in April. The CPI-W was unchanged in April (Daily Labor Report, page D-18). While nearly three out of four workers are confident about having enough money to live comfortably throughout their retirement years, workers continue to hold false expectations about the age at which they will be eligible for Social Security benefits, according to the "2000 Retirement Confidence Survey" of the Employee Benefit Research Institute, American Savings Education Council, and Mathew Greenwald Associates, a Washington-based survey research firm. The Social Security normal retirement age was phased up, from 65 to 67. Current retirees are most likely to rely on Social Security or employer-sponsored pension plans as their most important source of retirement income. In contrast, more than half of current workers expect personal savings to be their most important source of income in retirement A rebound in the volatile multifamily sector resulted in a 2.8 percent increase in total housing starts during April, but building permits continued to decline, according to data by the Census Bureau. Virtually all of the strength was in the multifamily sector. Starts of single-family houses -- which account for about 80 percent of the total -- rose just 0.3 percent in April after edging up 0.1 percent in March (Daily Labor Report, page D-1; The Washington Post, page E10). The Federal Reserve raised its target for overnight interest rates by half a percentage point yesterday, to slow headlong U.S. economic growth and keep inflation from rising. A statement explaining the action indicated that additional rate increases are likely in coming months. The action, widely expected by investors and analysts, will raise borrowing costs for many American households, especially those with home-equity loans and unpaid credit-card balances, and for smaller businesses that have bank loans. In many cases, rates on such types of credit are tied to banks' prime lending rate, which began rising before
Re: Re: Marx and Dictatorship
I agree that Marx's reply to (really comments on) Bakunin, although plausible sounding at the time, turned out to be wrong and B to be right. However, they do show M's own commitment to democracy. He dismisses B's charge that he wants dictatorship instead of embracing it, as Lenin did after taking power, as I said before; see also, The Immediate Taks of the Soviet Government 1918 (thanks, Barklay). I do not see why Marx's mild program in the Manifesto shows that his stuff "practically leads" to totalitarianism. Much of that program has been realized in democratic societies. Maybe you don't like the suggestion of force in implementing the program. But If laws are passed democratically and some people (the rich) refuse to go along, why is it dictatorial to enforce them by coercion, any more than against the poor or the workers? Do you think the rich get a pass on laws that deprive them of their property if they don't like that and refuse to obey? Of course they will yelp, "dictatorship! slavery!" But a democrtaic society has the right to send in the cops to enforce its laws. Write me down in favor of that sort of dictatorship. Even if the textual evidence says that Marx fits only the first tradition, one could still argue that the practical implications of his ideas are dictatorial. Look at what he says in the Manifesto: "The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State...1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes...3. Abolition of all right of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5.Centralisation of credit in the hands of the State6. Centralisation of the means of communication..." Draper also argues that during the period that Marx wrote, the word "dictatorship" had a different meaning than it does today. Meanings change over time, just as the phrase "the dictatorship of the proletariat" has taken on the meaning of "the dictatorship for, or in the name of, the proletariat" or "the dictatorship over the proletariat" (as a result of the Soviet and Chinese experiences). No, it took that meaning precisely because the practical consequences of a "dictatorship *of* the proletariat" are "dictatorship *over* the proletariat". As Bakunin correctly said "of the dictatorship", it is "a lie which covers up a despotism of a governing minority, all the more dangerous in that it is an expression of a supposed people's will" "government of the great majority of popular masses by a privileged minority. But this minority will be composed of workers, say the Marxists" Marx's responses to Bakunin are utopian through and through, simply show how naive he was when it came to real politics.
Re: substitute for Draper
What is Draper's theory of democracy ? Does he start from popular sovereignty ? CB Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/17/00 10:18PM I cite Hal Draper's magisterial books on Marx's politics too often. People bored with it should instead read Richard Hunt's two-volume THE POLITICAL IDEAS OF MARX AND ENGELS, Pittsburgh UP, 1984. His conclusions are similar to Draper's. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine
Gulf War syndrome
The L.A. TIMES today describes the symptoms of "Gulf War syndrome" as "fatigue, rashes, insomnia, digestive problems, poor concentration, nausea, joint pains, and other..." (page A31). With all due respect to the veterans of that "war," this sounds like the symptoms of being middle aged or of parenthood, except perhaps for the rashes. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~JDevine "From the east side of Chicago/ to the down side of L.A. There's no place that he gods/ We don't bow down to him and pray. Yeah we follow him to the slaughter / We go through the fire and ash. Cause he's the doll inside our dollars / Our Lord and Savior Jesus Cash (chorus): Ah we blow him up -- inflated / and we let him down -- depressed We play with him forever -- he's our doll / and we love him best." -- Terry Allen.
Re: Marx and Malleability
Marx was well aware that the political system of capitalism was a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, with bourgeois democratic republican forms shaped so much in favor of the bourgeoisie ( see The U.S. Constitution and _The Federalist Papers_ for some of the construction of U.S. bourgeois democratic republic), that it was still ultimately a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie relative to the working masses. Marx was also well aware that the first socialist nations would be in a world in which there were still dictatorships of the bourgeosie. The only way socialist nations could survive in such a political jungle would be with the ability to centralize sufficiently to defend against the inevitable attacks of the bourgeois state. Thus, Marx offered the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat as a general form that would be necessary until all bourgeois state were revolutionized ( from within ) out of existence. As with everything else, Marx would assume that this very general guideline would likely produce a history of practice , trial and error, by masses, communists from which the actual form of existence of the theoretical dictatorship of the proletariat would come. We are today under the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie, which would be a very important subject to discuss in conjunction with discussion of the d of the P. The D of P cannot be understood unrelated to the D of B. CB Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/17/00 10:38PM Jim Devine is doing an excellent job explaining this problem. I dealt with it a bit in my new book, Transforming the Economy. Marx felt that it could take generations for people to become ready to live in a cooperative society without ANY outside authority. The word Dictatorship was an ancient practice -- during times of emergency someone would take the helm for a SHORT time and then retire with not material benefits. Dictatorship did not imply at the time military troops going about coercing people. The word used for that situation was tyranny. Brad De Long wrote: Not contradictory. As Draper has shown, the Dictatorship of the P. is a temporary waystation to allow the future free development. Brad De Long wrote: yea, and why do you stop the citation in the comma? I am well aware that there are two Marxes, the one who tends to be democratic and the one who tends to be dictatorial. A kinder, gentler way to put it is that there are two Marxes, the one who believes in the free development of each and the one who believes that when they fight their oppressors the people have one single general will that the dictatorship of the proletariat expresses... Ole Charlie didn't understand much about political organization, or tyranny of the majority, or bureaucratic process, or separation of powers, or rights that people should be able to exercise against every form of state. In many ways Tocqueville thought deeper and saw further as far as political sociology is concerned... Brad DeLong -- Michael Perelman Or, in other words: "Democracy? We don't need no stinkin' democracy! We directly express the general will!" I would think that Cromwell was the first to make this mistake, when he dismissed the Long Parliament. Robespierre certainly made it--and then executed both Hebert and Danton when it became clear that their vision of direct expression of the general will was different from his. Dictatorship is not a temporary waystation but a switchpoint that--as Camille Desmoulins, Nikolai Bukharin, Peng Dehuai, and many, many others learned--led straight to Hell. But the point was made a long time ago by Rosa Luxemburg: "The suppression of political life in the whole of the country must bring in its wake a progressive paralysis of life in the Soviets themselves. In the absence of universal franchise, of unrestricted freedom of press and assembly and of free discussion, life in any public body is bound to wither, to become a mere semblance of life in which only bureaucracy can remain an active element. This is a law from which nobody is exempt. Public life gradually becomes dormant while a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustable energy and boundless idealism do the ruling and directing; from among these a dozen outstanding intellectuals do the real leading while an elite from the working class is summoned from time to time to meetings, there to applaud the speeches of the leaders and to give unanimous approval to the resolutions laid before them - in fact, power in the hands of cliques, a dictatorship certainly, but a dictatorship not of the proletariats but of a handful of politicians" -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Marx and Malleability
I agree with your point Rod. More incite into Marx's attitude to utopianism may be found in Engels' _ Socialism : Utopian and Scientific_. I think that Engels and Marx definitely make a big thing about their not anticipating socialism, but actually they do say a lot of things about it sprinkled through a number of different writings. They don't fully follow their own rule on not theorizing socialism. CB Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/17/00 11:25PM I might be wrong, but I always thought that it was because he was a democrat. People would decide for themselves what they wanted. People freed from the constraints of a society of scarcity, and class divisions, might decide things that he could not imagine. Rod Brad De Long wrote: I suspect that there is more to it than Marx's lack of thought about how systems of self-rule and people-power could actually work. I suspect it was his refusal to imagine his version of socialism that has made the currents of thought that flowed from him in many cases positively hostile to forms of free development that they do not like... Brad DeLong -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
working papers on-line
http://www.cfeps.org/papers.html has some papers that may be of interest to listers. They include: Designing Policies to Combat Joblessness by Philip Harvey THE MISSING ENTITLEMENT AND THE LOST ENTITLEMENT: WORK AND WELFARE, 1935 PRESENT by Gertrude Schaffner Goldberg Historicizing Government Work Programs: A Spectrum from Workfare to Fair Work by Nancy Rose FIFTEEN FATAL FALLACIES OF FINANCIAL FUNDAMENTALISM -A Disquisition on Demand Side Economics by William Vickrey We Need a Bigger 'Deficit' by William Vickrey PUBLIC SERVICE EMPLOYMENT: FULL EMPLOYMENT WITHOUT INFLATION by L. Randall Wray CAN PENAL KEYNESIANISM REPLACE MILITARY KEYNESIANISM? by L. Randall Wray FINANCIAL ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL SECURITY 'PROBLEM' by STEPHANIE BELL and L. RANDALL WRAY Economic Development in the UN by Jan Kregel
Re: Re: Genderization
Ricardo wrote: Marx has appropriated idea of "practical-laboring activity" as self-determination from Kant and Hegel. in the process transforming its meaning and, as Habermas would say, reducing it to "techne", and though there is a critical reflective aspect to Marx, it is still strictly in terms of class consciousness. Marx does not reduce Kant's "production through freedom" to "techne". For instance, like Kant (for whom "production through freedom" can "only prove purposive as play, i.e. as occupation which is pleasant in itself" Critique of Judgment p. 146) he conceives production through freedom as an end-in-itself, an activity whose subject is the "universally developed individual". (As I pointed out earlier, the role Marx assigns to "class" can be made consistent with this by interpreting it in terms of Hegel's account of the role of the master/slave relation in the development of rational self-consciousness.) "The practical creation of an objective world, the fashioning of inorganic nature, is proof that man is a conscious species-being -- i.e., a being which treats the species as its own essential being or itself as a species-being. It is true that animals also produce. They build nests and dwelling, like the bee, the beaver, the ant, etc. But they produce only their own immediate needs or those of their young; they produce only when immediate physical need compels them to do so, while man produces even when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from such need; they produce only themselves, while man reproduces the whole of nature; their products belong immediately to their physical bodies, while man freely confronts his own product. Animals produce only according to the standards and needs of the species to which they belong, while man is capable of producing according to the standards of every species and of applying to each object its inherent standard; hence, man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty." Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, Collected Works, vol. 3, pp. 276-7 "The real wealth of society and the possibility of a constant expansion of its reproduction process does not depend on the length of surplus labour but rather on its productivity and on the more or less plentiful conditions of production in which it is performed. The realm of freedom really begins only where labour determined by necessity and external expediency ends; it lies by its very nature beyond the sphere of material production proper. Just as the savage must wrestle with nature to satisfy his needs, to maintain and reproduce his life, so must civilized man, and he must do so in all forms of society and under all modes of production. This realm of natural necessity expands with his development, because his needs do too; but the productive forces to satisfy these expand at the same time. Freedom, in this sphere, can consist only in this, that socialized man, the associated producers, govern the human metabolism with nature in a rational way, bringing it under their collective control instead of being dominated by it as a blind power; accomplishing it with the least expenditure of energy and in conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature. But this always remains a realm of necessity. The true realm of freedom, the development of human powers as an end in itself, begins beyond it, though it can only flourish with this realm of necessity as its basis. The reduction of the working day is the basic prerequisite." Marx, Capital vol. 3 pp. 958-9 "In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly - only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!" Critique of the Gotha Programme Kant, Goethe and Hegel are sublated by Marx. My interpretive thesis is that the ideas set out in the passages I quoted are positively preserved in this sublation. Ted -- Ted WinslowE-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York UniversityFAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad De Long wrote: So why, then, is the first Marx so weak in post-Marxian Marxism? Why was the world afflicted with, say, Paul Sweezy's claim that "One need not have a specific idea of a... beautiful musical composition, to recognize that the... the rock-and-roll that blares at us exemplify a pattern of utilization of human and material resources which is inimical to human welfare"? My god. Where did he say that? Doug
Re: Marx's Daughter Son-In-Law was, Re: Marx andMalleability
Charles, I intend to track this down. My first check agrees that they committed suicide together, not that they were gunned down, but that it was in conjunction with the failure of the Paris Commune. A check of their death dates would probably resolve this. He was Paul Lafargue. BTW, Marx supported the more direct democracy of the Commune against the previous parliament. Lenin would later use this "anti-parliamentarism," which he favorably commented on in State and Revolution, to justify closing the Duma after elections gave control to the SRs in the aftermath of the Bolshevik coup. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 9:59 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19191] Marx's Daughter Son-In-Law was, Re: Marx andMalleability Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/17/00 06:25PM "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: I think that it is worth keeping in mind that his own daughter and son-in- law were gunned down at le mur des Communards in the Pere Lachaise cemetary at the end of that sad episode, As I recall, they had a hairy time of it, but they lived to commit suicide together some decades later. __ CB: Krupskaya mentions this in her _Reminiscences_.
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
CB, Well, there needs to be voting and the opposition needs to be allowed to exist and speak. Otherwise, I'm not sure. Marx's complaint about the parliamentarians seemed to have mostly to do with their pay and privileges. I don't mind reducing the privileges of legislators, but one needs to somehow keep them from falling prey to money interests. Campaign finance reform anyone? I accept Carrol Cox's dating of the suicides, btw. Sorry about being so way off on my return to the list. But Laura and Paul are mentioned on the plaque in Pere Lachaise, and that is a very surreal place in that far corner with all those overblown statues on the graves of the CPF leaders. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 9:57 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19190] Re: Marx and Malleability "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/17/00 05:25PM Jim, Hi. I'm back, at least for a few weeks. Guess I'll side with Brad D. on this one, although only slightly. I agree that the first Marx is clearly the dominant one in most of his writings, the one for free development of people. But he did at certain points issue some rather sulphurous diatribes about the wretchedness of bourgeois democracy and also painted a not so nice picture of the dictatorship of the proletariat as well in certain passages, these getting picked up by good old Lenin to justify some of his more unpleasant Bolshevik excesses (See _The State and Revolution_ for example). __ CB: Bien venue back Comrade Barkley. What's your theory of democracy that's better than Marx's, young or old) ? The place to find the most heated of these is in Marx's writings on the Paris Commune in its aftermath. I think that it is worth keeping in mind that his own daughter and son-in- law were gunned down at le mur des Communards in the Pere Lachaise cemetary at the end of that sad episode, just across from where all les grands fromages of the French Communist Party are buried with their exaggerated socialist realist sculptures that are not nearly as cool as what one finds at the graves of Edith Piaf, Oscar Wilde, the lamentable Jim Morrison, or even Pere Abelard Barkley Rosser Professor of Economics MSC 0204 James Madison University Harrisonburg, VA 22807 USA tel: 540-568-3212 fax: 540-568-3010 email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] website: http://cob.jmu.edu/rosserjb -
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
In The Closing of the American Mind, of course. ;) --jks In a message dated Thu, 18 May 2000 12:16:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Brad De Long wrote: So why, then, is the first Marx so weak in post-Marxian Marxism? Why was the world afflicted with, say, Paul Sweezy's claim that "One need not have a specific idea of a... beautiful musical composition, to recognize that the... the rock-and-roll that blares at us exemplify a pattern of utilization of human and material resources which is inimical to human welfare"? My god. Where did he say that? Doug
Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
At 12:25 PM 5/17/00 -0700, you wrote: At 10:48 AM 05/17/2000 -0400, you wrote: Second, the claim that forcing people to be free is OK does not follow from malleability, if if Marx held the malleability thesis. Rousseau used the seemingly sinister saying about forcing people to be free. But one of his points, I believe, is that _any_ society involves forcing people to be free. Well, most societies force people to be *not* free. It is very important to maintain a proper distinction between "forcing people to be free" and "forcing people not to be free"... I don't quite get what you say here. What R was talking about is that the only kind of "natural" freedom that exists is worthless, stuff like the freedom to be nameless, friendless, and bestial. People like Locke assume that the freedom that goes with property ownership -- including the ownership of one's own life -- is somehow "natural" (it exists in the "state of nature"). You also seem to be assuming that a worthwhile freedom exists prior to and independent of society. But such rights, as R argues, are created by society: worthwhile human freedom is a social phenomenon. Here he is agreeing with Hobbes, who also saw property and other rights as societal creations. R was arguing that society's forcing people not to be barbaric -- the suppression of "natural rights" such as the right to rape pillage -- actually created new opportunities, new choices in life, etc. That is, the creation of a society also creates new kinds of freedom. Again, Hobbes agreed: the creation of order out of his "state of nature" civil war creates freedom to live normal lives. To use a more concrete example, if a society designates a certain area of the country as a public park, which creates all sorts of opportunities for people to have picnics and the like (i.e., freedom). As another example, a rich capitalist country that's not being threatened militarily like the US has created "freedom of the press." That freedom has clear limitations (look at the propaganda we get!), but it's a kind of freedom nonetheless. Of course, the societal creation of freedom can easily go awry. All of the freedom (the power) might be concentrated in the hands of a small minority such as Stalin or the IMF and its allies. So the question of "what type of freedom?" arises. R himself preferred a democratic (or "civic republican") Social Contract, so that the violation of natural freedom is in tune with what people want. I think he was right about this. Freedom should be democratic freedom rather than being hogged by a small minority, with its impact imposed on society from above. Businesses shouldn't be allowed to dictate to society -- as when they freely trespass on our lungs with their pollution or when they arbitrarily throw workers out of jobs, for example -- unless society democratically decides that these rights are valid. The problem with Rousseau's Social Contract is that it's an abstraction and not much more. Since he sees society as corrupting the people, the people could never choose that Contract. So R brings in the all-wise Legislator (a latter-day Solon or King Utopus) who sets up the constitution, which then encourages people to have the "right" type of personal character (under R's malleability assumption) so that they democratically decide that the constitution is correct. This is the stuff of the top-down utopians of the 19th century and of later dictatorial or bureaucratic socialists. Marx solved this problem (at least to his own satisfaction) by pointing to historical trends that would allow working people to unite and create their own democratic social contract from below. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: substitute for Draper
At 10:30 AM 5/18/00 -0400, you wrote: What is Draper's theory of democracy ? Does he start from popular sovereignty ? I guess so, but I don't know if he developed his own theory of democracy. He mostly talks about Marx's theory. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: African trade
concerning the recent "free trade with Africa" bill, Brad DeLong writes: ... Effects on African economies may be substantial. Average labor productivity in both Africa and the U.S. rises. Real wages in Africa for urban workers surely rise, and for rural workers probably rise. why would real wages rise? are you assuming an aggregate Cobb-Douglas production function? Freer trade in African agricultural commodities may encourage over-specialization in these, which threatens to make the African countries even more dependent on cash-crop exports to pay for food imports. Thus, a foreign exchange crisis can cause starvation. (The cash crop fails, cutting off the supply of dollars to buy food.) Further promotion of exports also encourages commercialization of agriculture, which expels people from the land. This encourages migration to the cities and the development of a permanent migrant-worker underclass. However, those agricultural workers who can get permanent jobs might see rising income. The flow of people to the cities would undermine wages in the city, except for those workers able to insulate themselves from competition. The rise in the urban reserve army, in fact, would encourage urban workers to engage in such insulation. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Justin writes: I would add to this analysis that I think the democratic Marx was a lot more popular until the rise of the USSR; you see this in people like Rosa Luxemburg ... But the Soviet Unuion claimed the mantle of Marx and squelched democracy, So in the shadow of its prestige, the democratic Marx went rather by the wayside, to be salavged in margins by people like Draper. This is the problem. Most working people and many intellectuals go with "what works in practice." They looked at capitalism, which was giving them quite a bad deal during the period after 1917 and compared it to what they saw in the USSR. The USSR was getting a lot of criticism from the bourgeois press, etc., but since those organs lie about so many important issues, these folks thought that they must be lying about the USSR, too. (This impression was reinforced when the bourgeois press accentuated the negative and ignored the positive.) The USSR was the "lesser of two evils" and besides, it was far away and not threatening, or at least much less so than the boss who's breaking the union or speeding up the labor process. The USSR claimed to be "Marxist," while most people don't know much about Marx -- especially since most of the "democratic Marx" writings came to light very late -- so many equated the USSR with Marxism. A similar process encouraged the rise of a different version of Marxism during the 1960s 1970s. I agree with Brad, too, that Marx's refusal to think about recipes for the cookshops of the future didn't hepp. Marx didn't try to develop recipes for the cookshops of the future (utopian schemes) because he predicted/hoped/wanted workers to take control over their own lives in their own way (a democratic way). He only described the future of socialism at the most abstract way (in places like "Critique of the Gotha Programme") until he could learn from the empirical reality of events such as the Paris Commune. I think, however, the fault doesn't lay with Marx as much as with his followers. The problem is that there's no reason to restrict one's source of insights to only Marx and Engels. We can learn from all sorts of other socialist theorists (including the utopians). BTW, Marx himself never said that he was the only source of Truth. Justin is right that utopian descriptions of a possible socialism are useful. As Draper [sorry!] points on in his description of Marx Engels' views of the utopians, they agreed. Workers' discussion of utopian schemes, they thought, were part of the process of workers's self-education and self-liberation. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Genderization
Sam Pawlett wrote: Well, it is necessary that the male penetrate the female or the species will fail to reproduce itself. ...except for the occasional turkey-baster. Doug
Re: Marx's Daughter Son-In-Law was, Re: MarxandMalleability
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 12:24PM Charles, I intend to track this down. My first check agrees that they committed suicide together, not that they were gunned down, but that it was in conjunction with the failure of the Paris Commune. A check of their death dates would probably resolve this. He was Paul Lafargue. _ CB: See my following post. Krupskaya says she spoke with Laura Marx Lafargue in a Paris suburb in 1911, just before the Lafargues' joint suicide. __ BTW, Marx supported the more direct democracy of the Commune against the previous parliament. Lenin would later use this "anti-parliamentarism," which he favorably commented on in State and Revolution, to justify closing the Duma after elections gave control to the SRs in the aftermath of the Bolshevik coup. __ CB: On this theory of democracy, I think the popular sovereignty theory of the U.S. Constitution is the most advanced expression from the bourgeoisie. It is true that individual rights must be protected , as in the Bill of Rights. But the logical beginning must be popular sovereignty, modified to curb the contradictions created by the tyrannies of majorities. Marx, Engels and Lenin develop the theory of political liberty beyond this bourgeois principle, but again they start by theorizing a greater actual fulfillment of popular sovereignty than the bourgeoisie had in practice: the proletariat rises to ruling class establishing democracy. In the first place this is a recognition that working class rule ( even with representatives in a republic, i.e. with a minority of leaders heading a governement, not with direct democracy) is a democratic advance over bourgeois class rule, even when the latter has some democracy. My main thing in these discussions on this thread is that the critiques of Marx's and marxists' theories and practice of democracy are not founded on a theory of democracy superior to or even equal to that of the old fellas'. CB Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Charles Brown [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 9:59 AM Subject: [PEN-L:19191] Marx's Daughter Son-In-Law was, Re: Marx andMalleability Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/17/00 06:25PM "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: I think that it is worth keeping in mind that his own daughter and son-in- law were gunned down at le mur des Communards in the Pere Lachaise cemetary at the end of that sad episode, As I recall, they had a hairy time of it, but they lived to commit suicide together some decades later. __ CB: Krupskaya mentions this in her _Reminiscences_.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Barkley wrote: BTW, in his personal political dealings Marx was not known for democratic tolerance. When Bakunin and the anarchists threatened to take control of the First International, Marx closed it, shut down the shop, took his marbles and went home and pouted. this a partial picture. Bakunin and his anarchists (sounds like a rock'n'roll band, no?) also used all sorts of nasty tactics to take over the organization. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 12:40 I think, however, the fault doesn't lay with Marx as much as with his followers. The problem is that there's no reason to restrict one's source of insights to only Marx and Engels. We can learn from all sorts of other socialist theorists (including the utopians). BTW, Marx himself never said that he was the only source of Truth. Justin is right that utopian descriptions of a possible socialism are useful. As Draper [sorry!] points on in his description of Marx Engels' views of the utopians, they agreed. Workers' discussion of utopian schemes, they thought, were part of the process of workers's self-education and self-liberation. CB: Does Draper recognize that Engels is also a source on the Marxist view of democracy ( etc.) ?
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Brad writes: Or, in other words: "Democracy? We don't need no stinkin' democracy! We directly express the general will!" That's the perspective of many utopian socialists, Stalinists, and the IMF, which sees its policies as Good For Humanity in the Long Run, so that it doesn't matter if democracy is scuttled in the "short run." I would think that Cromwell was the first to make this mistake, when he dismissed the Long Parliament. Robespierre certainly made it--and then executed both Hebert and Danton when it became clear that their vision of direct expression of the general will was different from his. Draper is pretty clear that Marx was no fan of either Cromwell or Robespierre. Marx was quite critical of Rousseau's idea of the General Will. snip Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: substitute for Draper
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 12:40PM At 10:30 AM 5/18/00 -0400, you wrote: What is Draper's theory of democracy ? Does he start from popular sovereignty ? I guess so, but I don't know if he developed his own theory of democracy. He mostly talks about Marx's theory. __ CB: Does he recognize the centrality of popular sovereignty in Marx's theory of democracy ? On what specific issues does he claim to have a more accurate understanding of Marx's theory of democracy than Lenin ? CB
Re: Re: Genderization
Doug Henwood wrote: Sam Pawlett wrote: Well, it is necessary that the male penetrate the female or the species will fail to reproduce itself. ...except for the occasional turkey-baster. Why not say "it is necessary for the female to engulf the male sperm . . ."? How do you determine whether A penetrates B or B engulfs A? Carrol
Re: Genderization/Tenderization
Doug Henwood [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 12:49PM Sam Pawlett wrote: Well, it is necessary that the male penetrate the female or the species will fail to reproduce itself. ...except for the occasional turkey-baster. _ CB: Now there's sex materialized by a new regulatory norm.
Re: Marx and Malleability
Marx feared the damage that Bakunin would do. They would make fierce statements, just calling for repression, without organizing any base to resist the state. I believe that they declared a revolution in Lyon without doing anything to back it up. The police broke up workers' organizations that had nothing to do with Bakunin. I may have some of the details wrong, but anyway Marx saw Bakunin as a very destructive influence. Jim Devine wrote: Barkley wrote: BTW, in his personal political dealings Marx was not known for democratic tolerance. When Bakunin and the anarchists threatened to take control of the First International, Marx closed it, shut down the shop, took his marbles and went home and pouted. this a partial picture. Bakunin and his anarchists (sounds like a rock'n'roll band, no?) also used all sorts of nasty tactics to take over the organization. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
China issue
by Walden Bello and Anuradha Mittal, at the Food First web-site: Dangerous Liaisons: Progressives, the Right, and the Anti-China Trade Campaign Like the United States, China is a country that is full of contradictions. It is certainly not a country that can be summed up as "a rogue nation that decorates itself with human rights abuses as if they were medals of honor."1 This characterization by AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney joins environmentalist Lester Brown's Cassandra-like warnings about the Chinese people in hitting a new low in the rhetoric of the Yellow Peril tradition in American populist politics. Brown accuses the Chinese of being the biggest threat to the world's food supply because they are climbing up the food chain by becoming meat-eaters.2 These claims are disconcerting. At other times, we may choose not to engage their proponents. But not today, when they are being bandied about with studied irresponsibility to reshape the future of relations between the world's most populous nation and the world's most powerful one. A coalition of forces seeks to deprive China of permanent normal trading relations (PNTR) as a means of obstructing that country's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). We do not approve of the free-trade paradigm that underpins NTR status. We do not support the WTO; we believe, in fact, that it would be a mistake for China to join it. But the real issue in the China debate is not the desirability or undesirability of free trade and the WTO. The real issue is whether the United States has the right to serve as the gatekeeper to international organizations such as the WTO. More broadly, it is whether the United States government can arrogate to itself the right to determine who is and who is not a legitimate member of the international community. The issue is unilateralism--the destabilizing thrust that is Washington's oldest approach to the rest of the world. The unilateralist anti-China trade campaign enmeshes many progressive groups in the US in an unholy alliance with the right wing that, among other things, advances the Pentagon's grand strategy to contain China. It splits a progressive movement that was in the process of coming together in its most solid alliance in years. It is, to borrow Omar Bradley's characterization of the Korean War, "the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time." for the rest, see http://www.foodfirst.org/media/opeds/2000/5-china.html Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Barkley wrote: In the Critique of the Gotha Program he clearly goes totally utopian in his programmatic speculations. Just the contrary. _The Critique of the Gotha Program_ is one of the most "realist" criticisms of the program of the Eisenach faction of the German social democratic movement. it is a critique of bourgeois "idealism" as it criticizes the failure of bourgeois democracy to live up to its ideals of equality and justice. (See for this Norman Geras' article in _New Left Review_, Marx and Justice Debate, 1989 or 86?) I always find the first passage the most remarkable: Party program says: "labour is the sources of all wealth and all culture, and since useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society" Marx replies: "Labour is not the source of wealth. nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power. The above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct in so far as it is implied that labour is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments. but a socialist program can not allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that alone give them meaning.. the bourgeois have very good grounds to for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labour; since precisely from the fact that labour depends on nature it follows that the man who posses no other property than his labour power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the SLAVE of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labour. He can work only live with their permission, hence live only with their permission" (Marx-Engels reader, Tucker ed., ) Mine Doyran Political Science Phd student SUNY/Albany
Re: Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 01:08PM CB: Does Draper recognize that Engels is also a source on the Marxist view of democracy ( etc.) ? Draper follows a somewhat controversial position, since he treats Marx and Engels totally as a team, with no significant disagreements. For him, "Marx" is sometimes used as short-hand for Marx-and-Engels, though in citations he is always clear about which said what. CB: Bravo ! Me too. That's not controversial with me. However, this means that Lenin's _The State and Revolution_ is tough to beat as an accurate representation of Marxist theory of democracy, which is to say a part of the Marxist theory of the state, _The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State_ being the start , followed by _The Manifesto_, _The Civil War in France_ , Critique of the Gotha Programme_, but even more, all Engels and Marx's discussions of politics in letters and articles. I'll have to dig up the copy of Draper that Dave Finkelstein of Solidarity gave me. CB
RE: Genderization
RE: Well, it is necessary that the male penetrate the female or the species will fail to reproduce itself. This "biological fact" might lead to a different understanding of society than the following "biological fact": Well, it is necessary that the female envelop the male or the species will fail to reproduce itself. "Biological facts" themselves might embody presumptions about gender. Eric Eric Nilsson Economics California State University, San Bernardino San Bernardino, CA 91711 [EMAIL PROTECTED] winmail.dat
Re: China issue
A Forward from the Marxism list. Bello is a voice of reason from the Asian perspective. US attitude on China is based on two phobias: fear of communism and fear of non-white Asians. China, Cuba , Viet Nam and North Korea are the only three communist countries left in the world. China is particularly worrisome for the US because it has 20% of the world's population. In addition, China is an ancient culture with the longest continuous history in the world. If communism can succeed in China, it can in the whole world. A succesful China will also mark the end of White supremacy. When US foreign policy proclaims that the US national interest as being based on American values, the bottom line is the perpetuation of capitalism and White supremacy. The debate on linking US-China Trade to so-called human rights is bogus on both sides. The objectives on both sides are the same, the debate is only on methods. Both camps agree that China is evil for being communist and that a strong China is to be feared because it is alien to US values, in other words non-white. The so-called US Left wants to reject engagement with China to "starve" it into submission, while the US Right wants to trade with China to destroy the Chinese Communist Party by creating a new camprador class to make profit for US capital. The Left opts for ideological coersion while the Right opts for "peaceful evolution". The Extreme Left attacks China for having betrayed communism, while the extreme Right attacked Chinese market moves as merely a temporary detour. The liberal left attacks China for being not free while the liberal right demands more "free" market from China. In a perverse way, while the left's attacks are more hostile, the impact of its strategy is less virulent in that the strategy will retard the spread of capitalism in China, while the right's benign "pro-China" strategy is in fact more dangerous in that it will undermine more effectively soicialism in China. Moreover, Chinese current domestic politics is fixated on the myth of a friendly US, without any factual basis. If one reads Chinese domestic propaganda, all the US anti-China rhetorics has been carefully censored in the past months. The Chinese public is being told by its government that the US loves China, and there are only a small handful of diehard extremists. This is because the current leaders have placed their lot on good US-China relations, an increasingly bankrupt policy. The likely scenario is that the House will reject PNTR by a narrow margin. The Clinton White House and the State Department will fail in its ambiguous China policy of saving China from evil with "peaceful evolution". US-China relation will hit bottom from its current low level. The so-called reformers will experience a set back in Chinese domestic politics. It is unavoidable, because their false expectation the the US will bail them out from the mess of they have dug themselves in in embracing market fundamentalism has been a fantasy. But now the reformers can blame the US left for sabotaging China's reform program and shield themselves from attack by hiding behind patriotism. Bush will win the election and will de-link trade with China from human rights. NPTR will eventually pass. The US economy will crash, global trade will shrink from a decline of US consumer purchasing power, with unpredictable political impact globally. Henry C.K. Liu [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One of the cutting-edge issues confronting the developing new progressive movement in the U.S.--particularly those forces growing out of Seattle and A16 Washington--is the question of whether China has the right to have normal trade relations with the U.S. and the right to join the World Trade Organization. How this question is resolved will have a strong influence on the future political direction of the new movement. What follows is a unique contribution to the debate over China written by Walden Bello and Anuradha Mittal, answering point by point the objections put forward by the anti-China wing of the movement in a measured and fraternal tone. (Bello is executive director of Focus on the Global South, a program of research, analysis, and capacity building based in Bangkok; Mittal is co-director of the Oakland-based Institute for Food and Development Policy, better known as Food First.) The article is long, and I do not share all its assumptions, but for those concerned about the future direction of this movement I think many on this list will find it enlightening. Jack A. Smith, Highland, NY DANGEROUS LIAISONS: PROGRESSIVES, THE RIGHT, AND THE ANTI-CHINA TRADE CAMPAIGN By Walden Bello and Anuradha Mittal* Institute for Food and Development Policy, May 2000 From: www.foodfirst.org/media/opeds/2000/5-china.html
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Michael, Well, I may be wrong about this, and will have to eat more crow (good for egomaniac me, :-)), but it is my memory that what happened was that whether by hook or by crook or by whatever means, Bakunin and his allies had come to control a majority of the national groups that were in the First International. At that point, when they demanded to take control of it, Marx shut it down. Now, this is no particular defense of Bakunin. I fully agree that he behaved "irresponsibly" in a variety of ways, and that the anarchists were constantly provoking the authorities with strategies and tactics that simply brought on repression, the later assassination wave that was symbolized by killing off Alexander II so he could be replaced by the more repressive Alexander III being a clear example. However, the problem was that there was no clear democratic structure or basis to the First International. How did Marx come to be its leader? Who was voting? Were there any rules? The bottom line remains that once things did not go his way, Marx did not respect whatever rules of conduct there were in the organization and ended it. He verbally supported some form of democracy, but his personal conduct does not suggest that he practiced it. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Michael Perelman [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 1:12 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19219] Re: Marx and Malleability Marx feared the damage that Bakunin would do. They would make fierce statements, just calling for repression, without organizing any base to resist the state. I believe that they declared a revolution in Lyon without doing anything to back it up. The police broke up workers' organizations that had nothing to do with Bakunin. I may have some of the details wrong, but anyway Marx saw Bakunin as a very destructive influence. Jim Devine wrote: Barkley wrote: BTW, in his personal political dealings Marx was not known for democratic tolerance. When Bakunin and the anarchists threatened to take control of the First International, Marx closed it, shut down the shop, took his marbles and went home and pouted. this a partial picture. Bakunin and his anarchists (sounds like a rock'n'roll band, no?) also used all sorts of nasty tactics to take over the organization. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University [EMAIL PROTECTED] Chico, CA 95929 530-898-5321 fax 530-898-5901
substitute for Draper
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 01:28PM CB: Does Draper recognize the centrality of popular sovereignty in Marx's theory of democracy ? Yes, and not in a way that allows for single party dictatorship. On what specific issues does he claim to have a more accurate understanding of Marx's theory of democracy than Lenin ? The father, the son, and who's the holy ghost, Charles? You M-Lists are so Catholic. __ CB: A tired refrain from you. Repeat: your approach is more religious than mine. My thinking is more critical than yours. My references to Lenin do not make my approach Catholic or like religion. Your repetition of this anti-Leninist stereotype is dogmatic, stuckbrain liberalism on your part. You anti-M-Lists are so dogmatic and authoritarian in your thinking. CB
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Mine, But, Marx's remarks do not address what socialism will be. It is just more critique. The utopianism came in when he actually discussed what socialism would be, or more precisely communism, e.g. the withering away of the state and "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs;" all very nice, but also very utopian, especially the bit about the withering away of the state. What a pathetic joke. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 1:16 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19221] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd) Barkley wrote: In the Critique of the Gotha Program he clearly goes totally utopian in his programmatic speculations. Just the contrary. _The Critique of the Gotha Program_ is one of the most "realist" criticisms of the program of the Eisenach faction of the German social democratic movement. it is a critique of bourgeois "idealism" as it criticizes the failure of bourgeois democracy to live up to its ideals of equality and justice. (See for this Norman Geras' article in _New Left Review_, Marx and Justice Debate, 1989 or 86?) I always find the first passage the most remarkable: Party program says: "labour is the sources of all wealth and all culture, and since useful labour is possible only in society and through society, the proceeds of labor belong undiminished with equal right to all members of society" Marx replies: "Labour is not the source of wealth. nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labour, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labour power. The above phrase is to be found in all children's primers and is correct in so far as it is implied that labour is performed with the appurtenant subjects and instruments. but a socialist program can not allow such bourgeois phrases to pass over in silence the conditions that alone give them meaning.. the bourgeois have very good grounds to for falsely ascribing supernatural creative power to labour; since precisely from the fact that labour depends on nature it follows that the man who posses no other property than his labour power must, in all conditions of society and culture, be the SLAVE of other men who have made themselves the owners of the material conditions of labour. He can work only live with their permission, hence live only with their permission" (Marx-Engels reader, Tucker ed., ) Mine Doyran Political Science Phd student SUNY/Albany
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 01:30PM The bottom line remains that once things did not go his way, Marx did not respect whatever rules of conduct there were in the organization and ended it. He verbally supported some form of democracy, but his personal conduct does not suggest that he practiced it. _ CB: Or he may have had a different theory of democracy than yours ,such that the majority decision within a group that was a tiny minority of the overall working class did not constitute an important democratic principle to be observed. A theory of democracy has to consider what is the WHOLE group that constitutes the "demos" . CB
Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 01:28PM Draper follows a somewhat controversial position, since he treats Marx and Engels totally as a team, with no significant disagreements. For him, "Marx" is sometimes used as short-hand for Marx-and-Engels, though in citations he is always clear about which said what. CB: Bravo ! Me too. That's not controversial with me. it's controversial with Hegelian-Marxists, such as the followers of Raya Dunayevskaya (sp?), who see Marx as being Hegelian and Engels as not. _ CB: Yes, indeedy. Raya D. lived in Detroit for a while, and there is a Marxist-Humanist chapter here. I attended a number of their meetings a few years ago, and read a number of her books. Alas, I soon observed what you said. Anti-Engelism is a key component of her theory. Lenin fairs a little better. She says Lenin stopped one paragraph short in Hegel, but otherwise he did pretty good. Nonetheless, I try to learn about Hegel from the Marxist-Humanists. There are a number of other schools of Marxist thought that claim a big difference between Engels and Marx, so I was trying to get a measure of Draper. CB
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
In fact some Marxists argue that although Marx did not completely agree with R's notion of the general will, he was positively inlfluenced by R's critique of private property (unlike liberals like Hobbes and Locke who naturalized property ownership as a basis for apologizing inequalities and possesive individualism).If you read Marx's early writings in details, you will see that there is not an _explicit_ attack at Rousseau. I think he only mentions once in his essay "On the Jewish Question" (or manuscripts), not in a polemical way though.. for this, see Colleti's book on R, Marx and Lenin. the influence from R to Marx is not an easy generalization... Mine Doyran Political Science Phd student SUNY/Albany Robespierre. Marx was quite critical of Rousseau's idea of the General Will. snip Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Marx Engels, was Re: Marx and Malleability
Jim Devine wrote:
Draper follows a somewhat controversial position, since he treats Marx and
Engels totally as a team, with no significant disagreements. For him,
"Marx" is sometimes used as short-hand for Marx-and-Engels, though in
citations he is always clear about which said what.
The attempts to split off Marx Engels (Jim mentions the followers of
Raya Dunayevskaya) exhibit a sort of hidden attempt to transform
Marxism into religion of which Marx was the infallible prophet. (In this
they resemble liberal Christians who pick and choose among biblical
texts to construct a "Christ" more to their satisfaction than the one
created in the actual historical processes we call Christianity.) All
flaws in the "Prophet" can be ascribed to a demonically conceived
"Engels," leaving a Marx purified of all dross. And of course the
primary demonic text is the *Anti-Duhring*. Unfortunately, since
Marx contributed a chapter to that work ("From the Critical History")
it is really necessary to see it, like the *Manifesto*, as written by
Marx-Engels, and errors in it are equally ascribable to Marx as to
Engels.
And in this connection I would like to argue that one of Engels's
emendations to the Theses on Feuerbach is a powerful one and
is relevant to the present thread on the two Marxes. To the third
thesis, with its condemnation of doctrines that divide society into
"two parts, of which one is superior to society," Engels, when he
published the theses added the parenthetical explanation, "in Robert
Owen, for example." That is, utopianism of any sort is the clearest
(and most dangerous) of the many doctrines which implicitly claim
for their adherents this position superior to society. And the most
common form of utopianism today is a demand that before one
can even support a socialist movement there must be a guarantee
in advance that that movement will produce a state which meets
all the utopian's academic criteria for a "democracy." No such
gurantee can be given, regardless of how many candles are burnt
at the altar of "anti-stalinism" et cetera. To demand such guarantees
is to postpone permanently any hope for a socialist transformation
of society.
At each step along the way we *may* (with some hope but no
certainty) fight for those features which make the movement *at
that step* a democratic movement. But that struggle will necessitate
that the losers remain in the movement to struggle again. And of
course, both "sides" will always think of themselves as the "democratic"
side. We cannot demand that "the movement" incorporate guarantees
that it will still be democratic a week later. Future mongering is the essence
g of totalitarianism.
("Guarantees," such as checks and balances, separation of powers,
judicial review, electoral rules, etc. are mostly protection for those
who don't particularly need the protection. Ask the thousands of
blacks burned to death in the south during Jim Crow.)
Carrol
Re: Re: Marx and Dictatorship
On 18 May 00, at 10:21, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: "I agree that Marx's reply to (really comments on) Bakunin, although plausible sounding at the time, turned out to be wrong and B to be right. However, they do show M's own commitment to democracy. He dismisses B's charge that he wants dictatorship instead of embracing it, as Lenin did after taking power, as I said before; see also, The Immediate Taks of the Soviet Government 1918 (thanks, Barklay)." The point is that if we go by the actual implications of the ideas - as Bakunin was trying to argue - and their actual historical consequences - as the Soviet experience shows - as opposed to relying on what the texts say only (doesn't Smith sound beautiful too?), you cannot but conclude that Marx was dictatorial. I am sure Marx would have admired Lenin like no one else, especially after he succeeded in taking power (except for the possible jealousy he might have felt). Marx wanted a revolution. Write me down in favor of that sort of dictatorship. Yes, I know; how many Western Marxists were not reading Lenin again after Pinochet overthrew Allende in 1973?
RE: African Trade
RE concerning the recent "free trade with Africa" bill, Brad DeLong writes: ... Effects on African economies may be substantial. Average labor productivity in both Africa and the U.S. rises. Real wages in Africa for urban workers surely rise, and for rural workers probably rise. why would real wages rise? are you assuming an aggregate Cobb-Douglas production function? Sounds like standard-issue Heckscher-Ohlin trade theory or one of its modern relatives. Whether the "predictions" of these trade theories hold true if competition is not perfect and if unemployment exists is unknown. It is also unknown if the predictions of HO, or any orthodox trade theory, are valid in the presence of repressive governments. If imperfect competition is assumed, no general conclusions about the effect of free trade on "factor rewards" (sic) can be made - it depends on how you model imperfect competition. HO was used to predict a rise in wages in Mexico after NAFTA. Unfortunately this wage increase did not happen. Oh, yes, there was that recession in Mexico. So the response by HOers was that because of NAFTA wages didn't fall as much as they otherwise would have in Mexico during the recession. No evidence was given for this but it is simply an unsupported claim (unsupported by HO or any of its relatives because the predictions of HO are not valid in the presence of unemployed resources, particularly during a recession, or, in fact, if any government - authoritarian or not - exists). Eric Eric Nilsson Economics California State University, San Bernardino San Bernardino, CA 91711 [EMAIL PROTECTED] winmail.dat
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
In fact some Marxists argue that although Marx did not completely agree with R's notion of the general will, he was positively inlfluenced by R's critique of private property (unlike liberals like Hobbes and Locke who naturalized property ownership as a basis for apologizing inequalities and possesive individualism).If you read Marx's early writings in details, you will see that there is not an _explicit_ attack at Rousseau. This is basically right, except that Hobbes did not "naturalize" property ownership. What Hobbes did "naturalize" was a posited battle of each against all. In other words, he took the civil war of his own society (the English Civil War) and the rising phenomenon of capitalist competition (which was disrupting traditional ways of life) and then inserted them into what was supposed to be an un-societal setting (the "state of nature"). Hobbes would agree with Rousseau that it makes sense to talk about individual _possession_ in a "state of nature" (I control my books) but that it doesn't make sense to talk about individual _property rights_ (I own my books), since such rights are creations of society. In celebration of getting (some of) my books out of boxes, let's quote THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY (in Tucker's 2nd ed. MARX-ENGELS READER): "Only in community [with others has each] individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions; only in community, therefore, is personal freedom possible. In the previous substitutes for the community, in the State, etc., personal freedom has existed only for the individuals who developed within the relationships of the ruling class, and only insofar as they were individuals of this class." (p. 197) Here, not only do ME see freedom as a social creation (following Rousseau and Hobbes) but they point to the issue that liberals (both "neo" and New Deal) ignore, i.e., the distribution of freedom, the way in which the freedom of some (the capitalists, the State bureaucrats) limits the freedom of others (the workers). On the next page, ME refer to Rousseau's _Contrat social_ (though without naming Jean-Jacques), calling to it as "arbitrary," which I interpret as saying that it was simply a product of R's mind rather than being a product of societal processes in history. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Genderization
Ted: Marx does not reduce Kant's "production through freedom" to "techne". For instance, like Kant (for whom "production through freedom" can "only prove purposive as play, i.e. as occupation which is pleasant in itself" Critique of Judgment p. 146) he conceives production through freedom as an end-in-itself, an activity whose subject is the "universally developed individual". (As I pointed out earlier, the role Marx assigns to "class" can be made consistent with this by interpreting it in terms of Hegel's account of the role of the master/slave relation in the development of rational self-consciousness.) A few points: Kant is writing about artistic production, the act of producing a work of art, so I have trouble with your argument that Kant is anticipating what Marx later says about work. The master/slave dialectic comes early in the Phen. and is eventually sublated by stoicism Kant, Goethe and Hegel are sublated by Marx. My interpretive thesis is that the ideas set out in the passages I quoted are positively preserved in this sublation. I would say Marx is influenced by them. But we now know there is a lot more in Hegel than he thought, plenty more than the extra he saw after he went back to Hegel. Ted -- Ted WinslowE-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York UniversityFAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3
Scott re: the PRC Developmental State
There is a reference in Rob Scott's paper "China Can Wait" to "market-distorting" policies in China that are incompatible with WTO membership. This has been interpreted by some (incl myself, actually) as a jaundiced reference to industrial policy. EPI was founded in part to conduct research on the potential of industrial policy. We have also published material in praise of such policy in Asia (Steven Smith on South Korea, in particular). Below is Rob's response to this and some related criticisms. This is part of an exchange on the "Progressive Response" web site of the Institute for Policy Studies in D.C. http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/progresp/vol4/prog4n20.html#CONCLUSIONS MADE UP mbs CONCLUSIONS MADE UP [by Rob Scott, EPI] I have reviewed FPIF paper by John Gershman, and would like to set the record straight on a couple of points, prior to your debate tomorrow. Gershman accuses me of criticizing "China for not being sufficiently laissez fare" and claims that I call for "the elimination of the very policies that have been central to the relatively successful development strategies of several Asian countries." Frankly, these conclusions are simply made up. I did not say that China should follow the U.S. model, nor did I call for the elimination of the developmental state, as you will see if you review the original text of my paper [posted at http://www.epnnet.org/] Of course your authors are responsible for the quality and content of their research, in the final analysis. But I would like to set the record straight. I do call for the adoption of enforceable labor rights and environmental standards, and suggest that the U.S. should insist that China support the inclusion such measures in the WTO, in exchange for being allowed into that organization. I also call for measures to ensure that the U.S. trade position with China improves as a result of the agreement. In my view, China is welcome to maintain its developmental state, but we therefore need to use non-price mechanisms to prevent it from destabilizing the economy of the U.S. and the rest of the world along with it. I also think that much more is needed to push the kind of grand bargain suggested in the FPIF paper by Sarah Anderson, John Cavanagh, and Bama Athreya on China/WTO ["Don't Strengthen the WTO by Admitting China," posted at http://www.foreignpolicy-infocus.org/papers/chinawto/index.html]. I look forward to having more time for work on alternatives after the China/WTO debate is finished.
RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Barkley Rosser: The utopianism came in when he actually discussed what socialism would be, or more precisely communism, e.g. the withering away of the state and "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs;" all very nice, but also very utopian, especially the bit about the withering away of the state. What a pathetic joke. Where have you been, Barkley? Tell me the truth. Russia? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Jim Devine wrote:. This is basically right, except that Hobbes did not "naturalize" property ownership. in fact, he did. this is the sole idea behind R's criticism of Hobbes in _On the Origins of Inequality_. Hobbes falsely projected what is social (property) onto human nature, to say that it was in human nature to acquire property. R disagreed with him since he believed private property was a social invention, "not" a natural condition of human being. R says "averice" "oppresion, desire", all the attributes that liberal contract theorists traced to human nature are the charecteristics we gain in society. he then continues in the same passage, they "portrayed savage men". "it was in fact CIVIL MAN they depicted" i always find _Origins of Inequality_ a very important piece of work on the "anthropology" of human development.that being said, it should not be read from a romantic point of view as if R was talking about an abstract state of nature.. it should be read from a materialist point of view. R was *not* Marx, but if I were to choose among Locke, Hobbes and R, I would definetly put R near Marx, *not* near Hobbes.. Mine
Re: Marx on production through freedom, was Re:Genderization
Ricardo wrote: A few points: Kant is writing about artistic production, the act of producing a work of art, so I have trouble with your argument that Kant is anticipating what Marx later says about work. So, it seems to me, is Marx in so far as production in the "realm of freedom" is concerned. "man produces even when he is free from physical need and truly produces only in freedom from such need" "man also produces in accordance with the laws of beauty" "The realm of freedom really begins only where labour determined by necessity and external expediency ends; it lies by its very nature beyond the sphere of material production proper." "In a higher phase of communist society ... labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want" In the Grundrisse, opposing both Smith's conception of all work as sacrifice and Fourier's conception of artistic work as "mere fun, mere amusement", he points to "composing" as exemplifying "really free working". "It seems quite far from Smith's mind that the individual, 'in his normal state of health, strength, activity, skill, facility', also needs a normal portion of work, and of the suspension of tranquillity. Certainly, labour obtains its measure from the outside, through the aim to be attained and the obstacles to be overcome in attaining it. But Smith has no inkling whatever that this overcoming of obstacles is in itself a liberating activity - and that, further, the external aims become stripped of the semblance of merely external natural urgencies, and become posited as aims which the individual himself posits - hence as self-realization, objectification of the subject, hence real freedom, whose action is, precisely, labour. He is right, of course, that, in its historic forms as slave-labour, serf-labour, and wage-labour, labour always appears as repulsive, always as external forced labour; and not-labour, by contrast, as 'freedom, and happiness'. This holds doubly: for this contradictory labour; and, relatedly, for labour which has not yet created the subjective and objective conditions for itself (or also, in contrast to the pastoral etc. state, which it has lost), in which labour becomes attractive work, the individual's self-realization, which in no way means that it becomes mere fun, mere amusement, as Fourier, with grisette-like naiveté, conceives it. Really free working, e.g. composing, is at the same time precisely the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion." Grundrisse p. 611 The point re Fourier and the idea of the "laws of beauty" are also based on Kant. "But it is not inexpedient to recall that, in all free arts, there is yet requisite something compulsory or as it is called, mechanism, without which the spirit, which must be free in art and which alone inspires the work, would have no body and would evaporate altogether; e.g. in poetry there must be an accuracy and wealth of language, and also prosody and measure. [It is not inexpedient, I say, to recall this], for many modern educators believe that the best way to produce a free art is to remove it from all constraint, and thus to change it from work to mere play." Critique of Judgment p. 147 The master/slave dialectic comes early in the Phen. and is eventually sublated by stoicism Hegel's treatment of the master/slave relation shows only that "relations of production" can be connected with the development of rational self-consciousness so that Marx's emphasis on class is not incompatible with the interpretive thesis that he views the historical process as a process of the development of "freedom" in the sense of Kant and Hegel. Ted -- Ted WinslowE-MAIL: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Division of Social Science VOICE: (416) 736-5054 York UniversityFAX: (416) 736-5615 4700 Keele St. Toronto, Ontario CANADA M3J 1P3
Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
Not only that, but she came to Chico to visit Ivan Svitak. A lot happens up here in the big city. Charles Brown wrote: Yes, indeedy. Raya D. lived in Detroit for a while, and there is a Marxist-Humanist chapter here. I attended a number of their meetings a few years ago, and read a number of her books. Alas, I soon observed what you said. Anti-Engelism is a key component of her theory. Lenin fairs a little better. She says Lenin stopped one paragraph short in Hegel, but otherwise he did pretty good. Nonetheless, I try to learn about Hegel from the Marxist-Humanists. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Bakunin and his allies had come to control a majority of the national groups that were in the First International. At that point, when they demanded to take control of it, Marx shut it down. Actually, he moved it to the U.S., where Sorge shut it down, I believe. However, the problem was that there was no clear democratic structure or basis to the First International. Yes, you are correct. It was more of a movement than an institution. How did Marx come to be its leader? Probably by the respect that many people had for him. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability
I met her several times in the 1960s. Detroit being not so far from here. (I used to visit Fredy Perlman as well, another Detroit character). She was a wonderful woman, but totally obsessive on Hegel. She liked Lenin, but primarily the Philosophical Notebooks. Rod Michael Perelman wrote: Not only that, but she came to Chico to visit Ivan Svitak. A lot happens up here in the big city. Charles Brown wrote: Yes, indeedy. Raya D. lived in Detroit for a while, and there is a Marxist-Humanist chapter here. I attended a number of their meetings a few years ago, and read a number of her books. Alas, I soon observed what you said. Anti-Engelism is a key component of her theory. Lenin fairs a little better. She says Lenin stopped one paragraph short in Hegel, but otherwise he did pretty good. Nonetheless, I try to learn about Hegel from the Marxist-Humanists. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Tel. 530-898-5321 E-Mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
I wrote: This is basically right, except that Hobbes did not "naturalize" property ownership. Mine writes: in fact, he did. this is the sole idea behind R's criticism of Hobbes in _On the Origins of Inequality_. Hobbes falsely projected what is social (property) onto human nature, to say that it was in human nature to acquire property. R disagreed with him since he believed private property was a social invention, "not" a natural condition of human being. R says "averice" "oppresion, desire", all the attributes that liberal contract theorists traced to human nature are the charecteristics we gain in society. he then continues in the same passage, they "portrayed savage men". "it was in fact CIVIL MAN they depicted" I think we basically agree on this: Hobbes put "possession" -- and thus possessiveness (the seeking by each individual to accumulate power after power) -- into the "state of nature," which is illegitimate, as Rousseau points out. In the terms I used, this positing of possessiveness reflected Hobbes' experience with the English Civil War and the rise of capitalist competition. But following R, there's a distinction between "possession" (control) and "property" (state-endorsed rights). Hobbes did not put property into the state of nature. He wanted property to exist, though, which is an important reason he wanted the Leviathan to impose order. Similar to the plot of many Westerns, "private property" couldn't exist until the Sheriff rode into Dodge on his white horse to shoot and/or jail the Bad Guys. i always find _Origins of Inequality_ a very important piece of work on the "anthropology" of human development.that being said, it should not be read from a romantic point of view as if R was talking about an abstract state of nature.. it should be read from a materialist point of view. I like that book too. It's a very abstract and hypothetical anthropology, akin to a lot of "sociobiology" in style of analysis (trying to figure out what people were like without society) but with more attractive conclusions to most leftists. Even though as a materialist I get something out of it, I wouldn't call it a materialist book. (Materialism involves studying the empirical world, among other things.) My handy-dandy philosophical dictionary defines "Romanticism" as a movement rejecting the 18th-century Enlightenment, emphasizing imagination and emotion against the Enlightenment's emphasis on Reason. That fits R. While the Encyclopedists (Diderot, etc.) were glorying in the benefits of "civilization" and the early stages of capitalism, along with the importance of transforming people and conquering nature with the application of Reason, R pointed to the down-side of civilization's development (the increase in inequality, etc.) and the fallacy of separating reason completely from emotions. (In the SOCIAL CONTRACT, he wrote that the most profound law is that which is inscribed "in the hearts of the citizens," while hoping that the shared sentiments of the citizens -- patriotism, etc. -- would find expression in the general will.) R was *not* Marx, but if I were to choose among Locke, Hobbes and R, I would definetly put R near Marx, *not* near Hobbes.. Luckily we don't have to make that choice. R might be thought of as the father of modern collectivism, but he wasn't a democrat (until _after_ the all-knowing, all-seeing Legislator imposed a Social Contract that involved censorship, propaganda, a civic religion, etc.) Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Mark, So, was this utopian or not? We certainly did not see any withering away of the state, not in the former USSR, not in the PRC, not anywhere that was or is ruled by a self-labeled Communist Party (or some variation on that). Would that it were not so. I was in Denmark for a conference last week. Those social democracies still look about as good as we have managed anywhere on the face of this globe so far. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Mark Jones [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 3:02 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19239] RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd) Barkley Rosser: The utopianism came in when he actually discussed what socialism would be, or more precisely communism, e.g. the withering away of the state and "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs;" all very nice, but also very utopian, especially the bit about the withering away of the state. What a pathetic joke. Where have you been, Barkley? Tell me the truth. Russia? Mark Jones http://www.egroups.com/group/CrashList
Re: withering away of the state
Barkley writes that Marx was ... also very utopian, especially the bit about the withering away of the state. What a pathetic joke. Of course, there are lots of things that famous people said that we can dismiss as "pathetic jokes," with the benefit of hindsight. Even we non-famous people on pen-l aren't correct in our predictions. For someone writing in the 19th century, Marx is amazingly correct in his predictions, with the last 25 years or so fitting his vision more and more. Even so, I can't find any place where he saw this withering away as somehow inevitable and therefore a prediction that could be proven to be "pathetic" in hindsight. Rather, it's a potentiality, something that _can_ occur given the development of working class organization and consciousness. In the MANIFESTO, one of ME's most rhetorical of works, they don't see proletarian revolution -- or the move to a stateless society -- as inevitable. In fact, the class struggle might lead to the mutual destruction of the contending classes. This seemingly Hobbesian situation, in turn, sets the stage for Bonapartism (cf. Draper) and worse. But the "withering away of the state" in Marx is simply something that he shared with the libertarians, the desire to subordinate the state to society. While the libertarians will always be frustrated in this goal -- since the existence of class society (something they ignore) will always require either a large repressive state or a welfare state, and most likely, both -- Marx saw the end of classes as opening the way to reducing the state's role dramatically, to ending the division between society and the state (with the former in charge). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: RE: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx andMalleability (fwd)
Barkley wrote: So, was this utopian or not? We certainly did not see any withering away of the state, not in the former USSR, not in the PRC, not anywhere Lenin argued that anarchists misinterpreted "withering away of the state" in a very utopian way. Accordingly, they also misinterpreted Marx. Thus you are reading Soviet union under the influence of anarchist perspective and utopionism. What Marx had in mind was a socialist state, even though he did not explicitly articulate in that way. In his time, the only approximation to this model was Paris Commune, and Lenin's interpretation of the state derives from this model. It is a big mistake to say that MArx does not have a theory of state, and then romanticize him. In the _Communist Manifesto_ Marx outlines the features of a socialist state: 1. abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. a heavy progressive and graduated income tax. 3.abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. centralization of credit in the hands of the STATE, by means of a national bank with state capital and exclusive monopoly. 5 centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. 6. extension of factories and instruments of production owned by teh state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, the improvement of the soil generally in accordence with a common plan. 7. equal liability of all to labour.. 8. combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries. gradual abolution of the distinction between town and country; by a more equable distribution of the population over the country. 9. free education for all children in public schools.abolition of children's factory in its present form. combination of education with industrial production. Mine Doyran Political Science Phd student SUNY/Albany
Re: Re: withering away of the state
Jim, I did not mean that the vision was pathetic. I meant that the actual outcome in light of the vision/ (forecast) was pathetic. Barkley Rosser -Original Message- From: Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Thursday, May 18, 2000 5:30 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19247] Re: withering away of the state Barkley writes that Marx was ... also very utopian, especially the bit about the withering away of the state. What a pathetic joke. Of course, there are lots of things that famous people said that we can dismiss as "pathetic jokes," with the benefit of hindsight. Even we non-famous people on pen-l aren't correct in our predictions. For someone writing in the 19th century, Marx is amazingly correct in his predictions, with the last 25 years or so fitting his vision more and more. Even so, I can't find any place where he saw this withering away as somehow inevitable and therefore a prediction that could be proven to be "pathetic" in hindsight. Rather, it's a potentiality, something that _can_ occur given the development of working class organization and consciousness. In the MANIFESTO, one of ME's most rhetorical of works, they don't see proletarian revolution -- or the move to a stateless society -- as inevitable. In fact, the class struggle might lead to the mutual destruction of the contending classes. This seemingly Hobbesian situation, in turn, sets the stage for Bonapartism (cf. Draper) and worse. But the "withering away of the state" in Marx is simply something that he shared with the libertarians, the desire to subordinate the state to society. While the libertarians will always be frustrated in this goal -- since the existence of class society (something they ignore) will always require either a large repressive state or a welfare state, and most likely, both -- Marx saw the end of classes as opening the way to reducing the state's role dramatically, to ending the division between society and the state (with the former in charge). Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
Re: Re: Re: withering away of the state
Barkley writes: I did not mean that the vision was pathetic. I meant that the actual outcome in light of the vision/ (forecast) was pathetic. but as I said: Of course, there are lots of things that famous people said that we can dismiss as "pathetic jokes," with the benefit of hindsight. Even we non-famous people on pen-l aren't correct in our predictions. For someone writing in the 19th century, Marx is amazingly correct in his predictions, with the last 25 years or so fitting his vision more and more. Even so, I can't find any place where he saw this withering away as somehow inevitable and therefore a prediction that could be proven to be "pathetic" in hindsight. Rather, it's a potentiality, something that _can_ occur given the development of working class organization and consciousness. In the MANIFESTO, one of ME's most rhetorical of works, they don't see proletarian revolution -- or the move to a stateless society -- as inevitable. In fact, the class struggle might lead to the mutual destruction of the contending classes. This seemingly Hobbesian situation, in turn, sets the stage for Bonapartism (cf. Draper) and worse. Jim Devine [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://liberalarts.lmu.edu/~jdevine
[Fwd: The new U.S. movement--and China] Part 1
I've only browsed through this and have no strong opinion on some of its included arguments. But it seems worth considering. Carrol Original Message Subject: The new U.S. movement--and China Date: Wed, 17 May 2000 15:44:27 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: MARXISM LISTS [EMAIL PROTECTED] One of the cutting-edge issues confronting the developing new progressive movement in the U.S.--particularly those forces growing out of Seattle and A16 Washington--is the question of whether China has the right to have normal trade relations with the U.S. and the right to join the World Trade Organization. How this question is resolved will have a strong influence on the future political direction of the new movement. What follows is a unique contribution to the debate over China written by Walden Bello and Anuradha Mittal, answering point by point the objections put forward by the anti-China wing of the movement in a measured and fraternal tone. (Bello is executive director of Focus on the Global South, a program of research, analysis, and capacity building based in Bangkok; Mittal is co-director of the Oakland-based Institute for Food and Development Policy, better known as Food First.) The article is long, and I do not share all its assumptions, but for those concerned about the future direction of this movement I think many on this list will find it enlightening. Jack A. Smith, Highland, NY DANGEROUS LIAISONS: PROGRESSIVES, THE RIGHT, AND THE ANTI-CHINA TRADE CAMPAIGN By Walden Bello and Anuradha Mittal* Institute for Food and Development Policy, May 2000 From: www.foodfirst.org/media/opeds/2000/5-china.html Like the United States, China is a country that is full of contradictions. It is certainly not a country that can be summed up as "a rogue nation that decorates itself with human rights abuses as if they were medals of honor."1 This characterization by AFL-CIO chief John Sweeney joins environmentalist Lester Brown's Cassandra-like warnings about the Chinese people in hitting a new low in the rhetoric of the Yellow Peril tradition in American populist politics. Brown accuses the Chinese of being the biggest threat to the world's food supply because they are climbing up the food chain by becoming meat-eaters.2 These claims are disconcerting. At other times, we may choose not to engage their proponents. But not today, when they are being bandied about with studied irresponsibility to reshape the future of relations between the world's most populous nation and the world's most powerful one. A coalition of forces seeks to deprive China of permanent normal trading relations (PNTR) as a means of obstructing that country's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). We do not approve of the free-trade paradigm that underpins NTR status. We do not support the WTO; we believe, in fact, that it would be a mistake for China to join it. But the real issue in the China debate is not the desirability or undesirability of free trade and the WTO. The real issue is whether the United States has the right to serve as the gatekeeper to international organizations such as the WTO. More broadly, it is whether the United States government can arrogate to itself the right to determine who is and who is not a legitimate member of the international community. The issue is unilateralism--the destabilizing thrust that is Washington's oldest approach to the rest of the world. The unilateralist anti-China trade campaign enmeshes many progressive groups in the US in an unholy alliance with the right wing that, among other things, advances the Pentagon's grand strategy to contain China. It splits a progressive movement that was in the process of coming together in its most solid alliance in years. It is, to borrow Omar Bradley's characterization of the Korean War, "the wrong war at the wrong place at the wrong time." The Real China To justify US unilateralism vis-a-vis China, opponents of NTR for China have constructed an image of China that could easily have come out of the pen of Joseph McCarthy. But what really is China? Since the anti-China lobby has done such a good job telling us about China's bad side, it might be appropriate to begin by showing the other side. Many in the developing world admire China for being one of the world's most dynamic economies, growing between 7-10 per cent a year over the past decade. Its ability to push a majority of the population living in abject poverty during the Civil War period in the late forties into decent living conditions in five decades is no mean achievement. That economic dynamism cannot be separated from an event that most countries in the global South missed out on: a social revolution in the late forties and early fifties that eliminated the worst inequalities in the distribution of land and income and
[Fwd: The new U.S. movement--and China] Part 2
It is against this complex backdrop of a country struggling for development under a political system, which, while not democratic along Western lines, is nevertheless legitimate, and which realizes that its continuing legitimacy depends on its ability to deliver economic growth that one must view the recent debate in the US over the granting of Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) to China. PNTR is the standard tariff treatment that the United States gives nearly all its trading partners, with the exception of China, Afghanistan, Serbia-Montenegro, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, and Vietnam. Granting of PNTR is seen as a key step in China's full accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) since the 1994 Marrakesh Agreement establishing the WTO requires members to extend NTR to other WTO members mutually and without conditions. This is the reason that the fight over PNTR is so significant, in that it is integrally linked to China's full accession to the WTO. Organized labor is at the center of a motley coalition that is against granting PNTR to China. This coalition includes right wing groups and personalities like Pat Buchanan, the old anti-China lobby linked to the anti-communist Kuomintang Party in Taiwan, protectionist US business groups, and some environmentalist, human rights, and citizens' rights groups. The intention of this right-left coalition is to be able to use trade sanctions to influence China's economic and political behavior as well as to make it difficult for China to enter the WTO. There are fundamental problems with the position of this alliance, many of whose members are, without doubt, acting out of the best intentions. First of all, the anti-China trade campaign is essentially another manifestation of American unilateralism. Like many in the anti-PNTR coalition, we do not uphold the free-trade paradigm that underpins the NTR. Like many of them, we do not think that China will benefit from WTO membership. But what is at issue here is not the desirability or non-desirability of the free trade paradigm and the WTO in advancing people's welfare. What is at issue here is Washington's unilateral moves to determine who is to be a legitimate member of the international economic community--in this case, who is qualified to join and enjoy full membership rights in the WTO. This decision of whether or not China can join the WTO is one that must be determined by China and the 137 member-countries of the WTO, without one power exercising effective veto power over this process. To subject this process to a special bilateral agreement with the United States that is highly conditional on the acceding country's future behavior falls smack into the tradition of unilateralism. One reason the anti-China trade campaign is particularly disturbing is that it comes on the heels of a series of recent unilateralist acts, the most prominent of which have been Washington's cruise missile attacks on alleged terrorist targets in the Sudan and Afghanistan in August 1998, its bombing of Iraq in December 1998, and the US-instigated 12-week NATO bombardment of Kosovo in 1999. In all three cases, the US refused to seek UN sanction or approval but chose to act without international legal restraints. Serving as the gatekeeper for China's integration into the global economic community is the economic correlate of Washington's military unilateralism. Second, the anti-China trade campaign reeks of double standards. A great number of countries would be deprived of PNTR status were the same standards sought from China applied to them, including Singapore (where government controls the labor movement), Mexico (where labor is also under the thumb of government), Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states (where women are systematically relegated by law and custom to second-class status as citizens), Pakistan (where a military dictatorship reigns), Brunei (where democratic rights are non-existent), to name just a few US allies. What is the logic and moral basis for singling out China when there are scores of other regimes that are, in fact, so much more insensitive to the political, economic, and social needs of their citizenries? Third, the campaign is marked by what the great Senator J. William Fulbright denounced as the dark side of the American spirit that led to the Vietnam debacle--that is, "the morality of absolute self-assurance fired by the crusading spirit."10 It draws emotional energy not so much from genuine concerns for human and democratic rights in China but from the knee-jerk emotional ensemble of anti-communism that continues to plague the US public despite the end of the Cold War. When one progressive organizer says that non-passage of the PNTR would inflict defeat on "the brutal, arrogant, corrupt, autocratic, and oligarchic regime in Beijing," the strong language is not unintentional: it is meant to hit the old Cold War buttons to
: withering away of the state
Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: Jim, I did not mean that the vision was pathetic. I meant that the actual outcome in light of the vision/ (forecast) was pathetic. Barkley Rosser -- -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: : withering away of the state
Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future. Carrol
Re: Africa and free trade
Like NAFTA, the debate came down him to a question of the tariffs for textile producers. As I understand the bill, the reduction of tariffs is certainly the least objectionable aspect of the package. Along with the tariff reduction, come all sort of demands for the imposition of neoliberal policies that cripple the ability to maneuver in the future. -- Michael Perelman Economics Department California State University Chico, CA 95929 Do you really think that African governments are likely to attain the relative autonomy, focus on economic development as a principal goal, and bureaucratic competence needed to run a successful developmental state? A lot of things have to go right before a country's government can even think of successfully taking the Japanese or the Korean road. If, at some time in the future, an African government confident in its own economic strategy wishes to abandon the market-access benefits of AGOA in order to pursue state-led development, it can decide to do so. But that such a government might emerge in the future is no reason to keep African countries under tight textile export quotas now...
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Sowing Dragons (fwd)
Brad, I also noticed that the bill was concerned about the elimination of corruption. What is the record of United States regarding corruption? Our political campaigns are nothing more than organized bribery. Is it possible for a non-corrupt politicians to get elected to anything higher than the City Council in a small town? How many corrupt leaders has United States propped up around the world? This is not an argument that AGOA is a bad thing...
Re: Re: : withering away of the state
Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future. Carrol -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Re: Re: Marx and Dictatorship
Ideas have consequences, but not mechanical ones. You cannot conclude from the lack of democracy attendent in 20th century efforts to implement Marxist in undemocratic countries that any attempt will enbd up that way. But you seem to think taht any attenmpt at revolution is doomed to lead to dictatorship. This is a conservative article of faith, but not one that has any rational basis. I would say rather that the only way we can extend democracy is to get rid of class society--the technical meaning of "revolution" in Marxist theory. And, I will add, I was not subscribin to the "after Pinochet, back to Lenin," line. I was subsribing to the orthodoc bourgeois democratic view that legitimate laws can be enforced by coercion. If you disagree with that, you are an anarchist--right, ChuckO? --jks In a message dated 5/18/00 2:33:36 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: The point is that if we go by the actual implications of the ideas - as Bakunin was trying to argue - and their actual historical consequences - as the Soviet experience shows - as opposed to relying on what the texts say only (doesn't Smith sound beautiful too?), you cannot but conclude that Marx was dictatorial. I am sure Marx would have admired Lenin like no one else, especially after he succeeded in taking power (except for the possible jealousy he might have felt). Marx wanted a revolution. Write me down in favor of that sort of dictatorship. Yes, I know; how many Western Marxists were not reading Lenin again after Pinochet overthrew Allende in 1973?
Re: Re: Re: : withering away of the state
In a message dated 5/18/00 9:19:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Actually, isn't it a big part of our problem that what _most people_ DO mean by "socialism" what they had in the USSR? --jks
Marx and Malleability (fwd)
"J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 01:33PM The utopianism came in when he actually discussed what socialism would be, or more precisely communism, e.g. the withering away of the state and "from each according to his ability to each according to his needs;" all very nice, but also very utopian, especially the bit about the withering away of the state. What a pathetic joke. CB: Barkley, I know you are from an era of instant gratification , and you want to LIVE through the world revolution, but history is not a just so story. The transition to socialism, communism and the whithering away of the state is an epochal, i.e. indefinitely multiple generational process. Even Engels and Marx did not see it, even much of it. On the other hand, first time tragedy , second time farce, this whithering away.
Marx Engels, was Re: Marx and Malleability
Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 02:21PM
Jim Devine wrote:
Draper follows a somewhat controversial position, since he treats Marx and
Engels totally as a team, with no significant disagreements. For him,
"Marx" is sometimes used as short-hand for Marx-and-Engels, though in
citations he is always clear about which said what.
The attempts to split off Marx Engels (Jim mentions the followers of
Raya Dunayevskaya) exhibit a sort of hidden attempt to transform
Marxism into religion of which Marx was the infallible prophet.
)))
CB: And replacement of Engels with "self" as first disciple.
_
(In this
they resemble liberal Christians who pick and choose among biblical
texts to construct a "Christ" more to their satisfaction than the one
created in the actual historical processes we call Christianity.) All
flaws in the "Prophet" can be ascribed to a demonically conceived
"Engels," leaving a Marx purified of all dross. And of course the
primary demonic text is the *Anti-Duhring*. Unfortunately, since
Marx contributed a chapter to that work ("From the Critical History")
it is really necessary to see it, like the *Manifesto*, as written by
Marx-Engels, and errors in it are equally ascribable to Marx as to
Engels.
CB: And oh that atrocity _The Dialectics of Nature_, ( a collection of notes for an
incomplete book).
By the way, Marxist-Humanists are something of the opposite of another anti-Engels
line which claims that Engels was more dialectical ( with respect to nature) than
Marx, that Marx only used dialectics in approach to human history , not natural
history. Materialist dialectics was Engels' , and not Marx's.
And in this connection I would like to argue that one of Engels's
emendations to the Theses on Feuerbach is a powerful one and
is relevant to the present thread on the two Marxes. To the third
thesis, with its condemnation of doctrines that divide society into
"two parts, of which one is superior to society," Engels, when he
published the theses added the parenthetical explanation, "in Robert
Owen, for example." That is, utopianism of any sort is the clearest
(and most dangerous) of the many doctrines which implicitly claim
for their adherents this position superior to society. And the most
common form of utopianism today is a demand that before one
can even support a socialist movement there must be a guarantee
in advance that that movement will produce a state which meets
all the utopian's academic criteria for a "democracy." No such
gurantee can be given, regardless of how many candles are burnt
at the altar of "anti-stalinism" et cetera. To demand such guarantees
is to postpone permanently any hope for a socialist transformation
of society.
At each step along the way we *may* (with some hope but no
certainty) fight for those features which make the movement *at
that step* a democratic movement. But that struggle will necessitate
that the losers remain in the movement to struggle again. And of
course, both "sides" will always think of themselves as the "democratic"
side. We cannot demand that "the movement" incorporate guarantees
that it will still be democratic a week later. Future mongering is the essence
g of totalitarianism.
("Guarantees," such as checks and balances, separation of powers,
judicial review, electoral rules, etc. are mostly protection for those
who don't particularly need the protection. Ask the thousands of
blacks burned to death in the south during Jim Crow.)
_
CB: Yea, the rational kernel of bourgeois democracy starts with popular sovereignty.
All Power to the People,
CB
Re: Re: : withering away of the state
I bet if we took a count more people would consider the USSR socialism (communism even) than not. CB Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 09:15PM Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future. Carrol -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
: withering away of the state
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 10:15PM In a message dated 5/18/00 9:19:18 PM Eastern Daylight Time, [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes: Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Actually, isn't it a big part of our problem that what _most people_ DO mean by "socialism" what they had in the USSR? --jks CB: This is a problem for you because of your utopianism. Marx predicted that the Paris Commune would be a folly of dispair, but also knew that it was the beginning of actual socialism, with all its faults, and advanced his theory of socialism based on it. Similarly , the USSR to the 20th power.
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Marx and Malleability (fwd)
Jim Devine wrote: In the terms I used, this positing of possessiveness
reflected Hobbes' experience with the English Civil War and the rise of
capitalist competition.
Yes and No. Hobbes was not *simply* writing under the influence of his
circumstances. He was also *normatively* endorsing capitalism and private
property regime. If one's ideas simply reflect one's circumstances, then
Marx could never have been "critical" of capitalim.
plus, Hobbes' notion of the "instict of rational self-preservation" is
completely "ahistorical". Hobbes abstracts the concept from its historical
content, and then projects capitalism onto human nature as if human
nature has never changed, or as if it has always remained capitalist.
He does not locate rationality in its historical context. He assimilates
the very definition of liberty to capitalist rationality (posssesive
individualism).
You say R's model was an abstraction. i don't terribly disagree with this.
however, i don't see any problem with abstractions per se. Marx also
abstracted capitalism in such a way to formulate it as a mode of
production based on an endless accumulation of surplus, using classical
political economy as a starting point. He did this albeit in a critical
manner. We always need abstractions to understand the reality.
Abstraction is a useful analytical tool to reason and to see who we are,
what we are and what our human needs are (See for this Geras's book on
_Marx and Human Nature_) The problem is to decide which abstractions are
better approximations of reality. Definetly, Hobbes's human nature is a
false abstraction as well as a "distorted" understanding of his own
circumstances. Moreover, it is an ideological distortion of the
anthropology of human nature: "I put for a general inclination of mankind
a perpetual and rentless desire for power after power, that ceaseth only
in death" (Leviathan chpt 11). My credit to R is that he saw that human
nature was historically conditioned as it took shape through the
development of modern civilization, the same human nature which Hobbes
fixated, essentialized and ahistoricized "as war of man against another
man".He also understood that natural right is an abstraction created by
convention to preserve the right of the strongest. R argued hunting and
gathering societies did not even have a conception of private property.
The desire to posses developed as people started to settle on the land and
claimed right to property. He says " The first person who, having eclosed
a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people
simple enough to beleive him, was the true founder of civil society"
But following R, there's a distinction between "possession" (control) and
"property" (state-endorsed rights).
I don't recall this. do you have a citation for this distinction from the
text. Under "capitalism", state is by definition a protector of private
property regime.
Hobbes did not put property into the state of nature. He wanted property
to exist,
The only way for him to LEGITIMIZE property was to see it as a
"natural right". Hobbes uses the concept "naturalness" in two ways.
Sometimes "natural" implies a concept with which man "spontaneously" gains
"security", "acquisitiveness" and "agression". Sometimes, it is something
that generates "perfect reason", which allows man to make himself as
"secure" as possible.
though, which is an important reason he wanted the Leviathan to impose
order.
true because Hobbes wanted capitalism. Leviathan, he thought, could impose
possesive market regime. Leviathan ("supreme soverign") was an abstraction
par excellence, just as R's Social Contract was, so I don't see the point
in your argument that R's model was an abstraction whereas H's model was
influenced by his own circumstanes. R was as much influenced by his
own context as Hobbes was.
i always find _Origins of Inequality_ a very important piece of work on
the "anthropology" of human development.that being said, it should not be
read from a romantic point of view as if R was talking about an abstract
state of nature.. it should be read from a materialist point of view.
I like that book too. It's a very abstract and hypothetical anthropology,
akin to a lot of "sociobiology" in style of analysis (trying to figure
out
what people were like without society) but with more attractive
conclusions
to most leftists.
come on! which socio-biology?. I strongly disencourage you to assimilate R
to biologically reductionist socio-biology arguments that reduce man to
"genes". Unlike sociobiologists, R REJECTS to see inequality, domination,
war, endless desire for power in human nature. The book itself is a very
analysis of the development of HUMAN SOCIETY, not an analysis of people
"without society"."Men are not naturally enemies, for the simple reason
that men living in the original state of INDEPEDENCE do not have
sufficiently constant relationships among themselves to bring about either
a state of
Re: Re: : withering away of the state (fwd)
What did you read about Soviet socialism? Mine Interesting musings Carrol, but words have meanings, and what most people mean by the word socialism is not what was seen in the USSR. You can call it what you want, but I don't call it socialism. Rod Carrol Cox wrote: Rod Hay wrote: Perhaps Marx was utopian. But we will have to wait until we have a socialists society, in order to find out. The Soviet Union called itself socialist but it wasn't. This I think is utopian. Socialism is a movement, not a platonic form against which you can measure any state and say it is or isn't "socialist." It would seem to me wrong to assume that there will not be many more episodes in the socialist movement which will go greatly astray in one way or another, many more defeats. THe struggles of 6 billion people and their descendants to find their way out of capitalism will almost certainly contain episodes at least as unpleasant as the USSR at its worst. The struggle for socialism has to be essentially g self-justifying at each step, regardless of the (temporary) final outcomes of each struggle. If the only or even the chief reason to fight for socialism is the achievement of the socialism for our great-grandchildren, then socialism is a bust. This is *not* to disagree with Rosa Luxemburg that the final goal is everything, the struggle is nothing. The role of that final goal is the understanding we achieve through it of the present. Hence the struggle depends on the final goal *independently* of whether or not we ever achieve that final goal. Marx, as I understand him, did not propose the classless society and the withering away of the state as a prize to reward us at the end. He saw that just as feudalism could be understood from the perspective of capitalism, so capitalism could only be understood from the perspective of communism. We can only understand the capitalist state (and therefore organize our struggle against it) by seeing it from the perspective of the society in which the state has withered away. [I really think it would help if a larger proportion of marxists suffered from depression. That would help dampen the galloping optimism that blithely says the USSR was not socialist -- for the implication of that evaluation is that socialism of just the sort we want will be easily attainable if we just have the right ideas. Horse Feathers!] The evil at the heart of capitalism (or of any social order of which the market is the central institution) is that Reality becomes the Future, while the past and present become mere appearance. I began to see this by reading and re-reading Plato's *Republic* and attempting to explain it to undergraduates. In Plato's timarchy (in effect a landed aristocracy of some sort) the Past is the Real. The present is merely a recapitulation of the past and is emptied of reality. In what he called an oligarchy (a state ruled by those whose motive was the accumulation of wealth [=money?], the past was non-existent, and the present only the shadow of the future. Action becomes meaningless in itself, since it cannot exhibit ambition (which is the struggle to maintain what the past has given us) nor can it be its own end. Since anything resembling capitalism was still nearly 2000 years away, it was remarkable that even in the piddling financial manipulations of his day Plato could see this. The core capitalist metaphor, that of *investment* catches up this trivialization of the present by the future. The *demos* Plato discarded with contempt: they *chose* (he implies) to live only in the present, their lives dominated by a lowly lust for immediate satisfaction. (One of the many modern equivalents of this is the accusation that unwed mothers have babies in order to make money off of public aid.) There would have been no way to theorize this in Plato's world, for that depended on the development of wage labor under capitalism and its theorization in Marx's conceptions of surplus value and alienation. The working class, by definition, is that class which *must* live in the present (that being the main thrust of the assumption that labor power is purchased at is value). And it is this (unavoidable) attachment of the working to the present (which implicitly is also a valuation of the past such as the investor dare not allow him/herself) which makes the working class a *potentially* revolutionary class. Its revolutionary task is to free humanity from the tyranny of the future. Carrol -- Rod Hay [EMAIL PROTECTED] The History of Economic Thought Archive http://socserv2.mcmaster.ca/~econ/ugcm/3ll3/index.html Batoche Books http://Batoche.co-ltd.net/ 52 Eby Street South Kitchener, Ontario N2G 3L1 Canada
Re: Marx Engels, was Re: Marx and Malleability
G'day Charles, You say "Materialist dialectics was Engels' , and not Marx's." I rteckon we have to be very explicit and specific here. I thought, for instance, that you and I had come to agree that materialism is not the same as physicalism? Social *relations* are material for Marx, and, indeed, the basis of what he called his materialist conception of history. Freddy's *Anti-Duhring* has some beaut bits in it, but, as I've tried to show you elsewhere, is difficult to nail on exactly what is meant by 'dialectic'. Stalin ended up with a view that finds support in Anti-Duhring, but so does, say, Fromm - and those two chaps would've agreed on bugger-all. Cheers, Rob.
Re: Marx's Daughter Son-In-Law was
In _Reminiscences of Lenin_ Krupskaya says: " Ilyich (Lenin) got in touch with Paul Lafargue, through Charles Rappaport. Lafargue, the son-in-law of Karl Marx, was a well-tried fighter, of whose opinon Ilyich thought very highly. Paul Lafargue, with his wife Laura - Marx's daughter - live in Draveil, about 25 kilometres from Paris. They had already retired form active work. One day Ilyich and I cycled down to see them. They received us very kindly. Vladimir Ilyich began to talk to Lafargue about his book on philosophy, while Laura Lafargue took me for a walk in the park. I was quite excited - I was actually walking with the daughter of Karl Marx ! I scrutinized her face eagerly, anxious to find traits of resemblance with Marx. In my confusion I babbled incoherently about women taking part in the revolutionary movement , about Russia. She answered me , but somehow the conversation flagged. When we got back Lafargue and Ilyich were discussing philosophy. "He will soon prove the sincerity of his philosophic convi! ctions, " Laura said, referring to her husband, and they looked at each other rather strangely. I did not understand the meaning of those words and that glance until I heard of the death of the Lafargues in 1911. They both died as atheists, having committed suicide together because old age had come and they had no strength left for the struggle." "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." [EMAIL PROTECTED] 05/18/00 12:42AM Carrol, I think that was another daughter and son-in-law. But, I could be wrong. One of his daughters is mentioned on the plaque at the site in question. Barkley -Original Message- From: Carrol Cox [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Wednesday, May 17, 2000 6:26 PM Subject: [PEN-L:19162] Marx's Daughter Son-In-Law was, Re: Marx and Malleability "J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." wrote: I think that it is worth keeping in mind that his own daughter and son-in- law were gunned down at le mur des Communards in the Pere Lachaise cemetary at the end of that sad episode, As I recall, they had a hairy time of it, but they lived to commit suicide together some decades later. Carrol
something to brighten your day
Hey Penners - Somehow I ended up on this e-list called tch-econ, which is low volume enough that I haven't bothered unsubbing. Then this little exchange came along. Had to pass it along. Ellen ORGINAL MESSAGE: In a discussion with a literature guy and an art historian here at "the technological university," I made some comments about the ranking of schools of thought in economics. Perhaps this is good for a laugh. Any thoughts? Economics differs from the social sciences in that schools of thought differ widely in their respectability and prestige. The ordering is roughly like this: 1. neoclassical (including "new classical" and pretty much the same as "consensus modern economics") 2. nobody 3. nobody 4. nobody 5. nobody 6. Keynesian 7. Coasian/Williamsonian/transaction cost theory/new institutionalist 8. Austrian 9. Post-Keynesian 10. Rational Choice Marxism 11. Behavioral . . . 33. Solidarist Social Economics 34. Sequential-Market Marxism 35. American Institutionalism . . . Places 2-5 are vacant because there just is no other school of thought strong enough to be ranked that close to neoclassical. REPLY (1): This is consistent with my opinion that economics is clearly evolving from a "soft" to a "hard" science. The harder the science, the fewer the schools of thought. FURTHER RESPONSES: Of course, in the Soviet Union under Stalin, there was only one school of thought in evolutionary biology: Lamarckianism. The major difference, of course, is that the emerging consensus for neo-classicalism occurs in a free environment. The consensus for Larmarckianism emerged in a totalitarian environment.
