Re: M-TH: Re: Smith and Cuckson on Lenin philosophy
Gidday to you too, my slippery eel! You write: I hope we focus on the categories SC make salient, but fail to tell us just what these might be... rather than do that old "Lenin was Marx in practice!" "No he wasn't!" quote-mongering dance, again. We've an archive choc-full of that stuff already, I reckon. Isn't (hem) practice quite a central category in this connection, O wriggly one? Made salient by (hem) Marx, and (in respect of the Absolute Spirit) dead dog Hegel himself? Your starter for five, Hugh! You blinked when you tried to pre-empt the practice argument, Rob! Obviously smelling a weak spot or two in S C... So I'll double that! Hugh PS And please, Rob, don't make quoting as such an issue, there's a good lad! Let's relate to the, how-shall-we-put-it, saliency of any quotes given, rather than doing the old "All you can do is quote!" vs "Where's your proof, then?" dance again. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Lenin and the working class
Title: Re: M-TH: Lenin and the working class LO All, Consequently it would seem that Lenin's vanguardist elitism was a necessary tool. But the theory of the vanguard is predicated on Lenin's (false) assumption of an inherently revolutionary working class - i.e. that if the working class is objectively revolutionary, then the actions of the vanguard on their behalf - whether they consciously want it or not - is the fulfillment of their historical role. Strangely, this is also the argument used by many rapists. This wasn't just Lenin's assumption. It was Marx's and Engels's too. The same way as the bourgeoisie was inherently revolutionary in relation to feudalism. The historical role of the bourgeoisie was to emancipate itself from the chains of feudal property relations. Which it did. Now it's the turn of the working class. The bourgeoisie took centuries. We'll do it faster -- and we'll damn well have to to prevent the bourgeoisie from destroying our world. The rapist comparison is stupid. If any social force can be compared to a rapist today it's the imperialist bourgeoisie. The violence of the working class should be aimed at dispossessing this bourgeoisie, ie at stopping its depradations. This is pure self-defence and what the feminist movement (or the more militant wings of it) have been advocating for women for a long time. The role of the working class is that of women in general compared to militant feminists in this particular comparison. And who would argue against the mass of women being empowered to defend themselves against the gender enemy? Cheers, Hugh PS It's enough to speak of Lenin's vanguardism. Elitism has nothing to do with it.
M-TH: Making friends
Love to, Bob, only I'll be alphabetising the spicerack for the foreseeable future ... Yours-in-search-of-a-party-who-reckon-agreeing-on-the-social-ownership-and-contr ol-of-the-means-of-production-is-more-than-enough-reason-to-be-friends, Rob. Burn the spicerack,Rob, make yourself comfortable on the fence, sip a tube and consider: "Social ownership" can cover a multitude of sins, but the idea's right. The thing is, if we're going to make a mass workers' revolution, then we're going to be doing it alongside people we disagree with a damn sight more than many of those we've been engaged in in-fighting with during the bad times. The whole thing is to find the goals and the organizational forms (both mass democratic institutions like Soviets/Workers Councils and more focused party groups like the revolutionary Bolsheviks) that enable us to work together for the big shared objective of ending capitalist dictatorship while managing our disagreements to test proposals and sharpen our impact. The next period is going to be all about overcoming the kind of counterproductive and sectarian attitudes to working-class movement displayed by many on the left for instance during the London Mayoral campaign. Our job will be made a lot easier by the growing involvement of whole sections of working-class comrades in revolutionary politics. If you can imagine the solidarity and non-sectarian work done during the dockers' mobilizations in Liverpool and Australia, for instance, with a new level of revolutionary political consciousness (including of course the need for party organization, even though this will express itself in the form of different parties in competition to start with) you'll get some idea of where we're heading if we play our cards right. Cheers, Hugh PS The telly showed an exhibit at the Swedish Army Museum yesterday. Called the wooden horse, it's a sharp-edged plank on legs that a miscreant was forced to straddle, so it cut up between his legs. The worse the "crime" the heavier the weights tied to his legs. That's not the way I envisage Rob sitting on his fence, but if he isn't careful, it might turn into this kind of thing without him noticing in time!! Nasty... --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: COMP: Honor System Virus (mutation)
=== This virus works on the honor system If you are running a Macintosh, OS/2, Unix, or Linux computer, please randomly delete several files from your hard disk drive and forward this message to everyone you know. = --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Membership etc
G'day George, There is a way to do this, but I'm not sure whether everyone has access to it (I really don't grasp the technology's workings, I'm afraid). I don't think this list has discussed a policy on disclosing the e-identities of subscribers. For my part, I am happy for such disclosure to happen, but maybe that's an issue for Thaxists to discuss first. My reservation is based on the tendency of most Thaxists to remain in lurk mode. This may, I suppose, be for a good reason (although a few more contributors would greatly be appreciated). If Thaxists don't wish to make their feelings known on-list, please drop me a line off-list. Or if the information has always been publicly available, it'd be good to know that, too. Moderators should know that sorta stuff, I s'pose ... Cheers, Rob. This possibility was removed after discussions about not making things too easy for cyberspooks. What replaced it was the occasional moderator's report about the numbers subscribed and a breakdown of their nationalities. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Revolution and the tasks of the day
Gidday Rob, Sez Hugh of the little disagreement of late: it's part of the struggle for the leadership of the working class, It might be an analogue of some such struggle in some place and time, but I doubt anyone here really seeks to lead the working class. I don't anyway. Always the "wanting", never the needing, Rob! I see politics as the task of matching our wants to historical needs. If you accept Marx's analysis of the class character of and the centrality of the class struggle in the capitalist mode of production, and consider his political practice to grow out of his theoretical conviction, then it becomes clear that he saw the development of capitalism as bearing with it the need for the emancipation of the working class and the institution of a consciously organized socialist mode of production. And saw with this a *need* for conscious revolutionary working-class leadership if this was to come about. This is a theme he harps on about from the Manifesto onwards. His political propaganda, agitation and participation were all aimed at creating a suitable conscious leadership of the working-class. Focusing and channelling the existing wants of radical workers into something more disciplined and historically suitable for the objective task facing them. Need to qualify this: true, revolutionary Bolsheviks -- there's a lot of fakes around, causing problems until a clear and trustworthy international leadership crystallizes. 'Clear and trustworthy' to whom, Hugh? Whilst purported socdems may purportedly 'lead' the class now, an awful lot clearly don't trust 'em. Yet no other international leadership' has arisen of late. Why's that, d'you think? They don't "purportedly" lead it, they do lead it. Badly and provocatively, it's true, but these people are the actually existing mass leadership of the working class. While the Soviet Union still existed there was a competing mass leadership of the class, the Stalinists, and the main difference between them and the SocDems was that they developed their counter-revolutionary policies in a workers state, while the SoDs did it in a bourgeois state. No one would dream of accusing SoDs of being revolutionaries, but the Stalinists often donned the mask of revolutionaries when it suited their purpose -- an indicator of which of the leaderships was the most treacherous perhaps. The reasons for the lack of a strong mass Trotskyist leadership are basically three. The first is the unprincipled persecution and slaughter of Trotskyist militants and leaders by the Stalinists (Vietnam being an excellent example) throughout the world, the second is the unparallelled discipline and loyalty of the working class to its political leaders (which when the leadership is once more what it should be will once more be transformed into a hugely positive factor) which kept them bound to counter-revolutionary leaders for too long and kept them from listening to alternatives, and the third reason is political weakness in the Trotskyist movement itself (very materially worsened by Stalin's assassination of Trotsky in 1940) -- best typified by the Pablo-Mandel cop-out in the early 50s, when fatalism and objectivism became the lodestar of the International and it was no longer thought "necessary" to fight to build revolutionary parties in the workers states. Hugh agrees with Dave: Bureaucratic, moralizing and intolerant are words that spring to mind to describe the disorganizing activities of the Social-Democrats. And the bureaucrats (of whatever school) can always be told by the vitriol they spray on the working class for being "unable, incapable and unprepared". Well, Hugh blames poor or treacherous leadership. That's why I talk about the bureaucracy -- such rank and file SoDs as there are don't really count for much in how the leadership acts towards the class -- they're just a necessary political base, a transmission belt to the class and getters-out of votes at election time. And I reckon the western working class is not willing, or feels it would be too risky, to overthrow the capitalist system. Again the subjectivity! Does it need to overthrow the system or doesn't it? If it does, what's the next step? I certainly don't think the vast majority of the world's people is 'unable' to do, or 'incapable' of doing, anything. But that's cos you're not a typical SoD bureaucrat. That's why I see you as sitting on a fence. You recognize the potential of the class to change history. All SoD bureaucrats and most rank and file SoDs don't. 'Unprepared' I'll go along with. They must be, else they'd recognise the enduring Truth of at least one of the schools of Trotskyism - no, Hugh? If prepared they are, where is their leader? In the sense you take "unprepared", I'd agree with you -- the class is not at the moment ready to take power. I carelessly added in a meaning of "potentially willing", you know "ready to go the whole
M-TH: Revolution and the tasks of the day
Dave thinks: This discussion is a load of shit. Not really, it's part of the struggle for the leadership of the working class, which at the moment is in the hands of the Social-Democrats and is being mainly contended for by equally worthless ex-Stalinists, sceptical New Lefters (often one and the same) or Greens (worthless from the point of view of will to actually carry out a revolutionary transformation of the property relations in society). Bolsheviks are not sectarian because they stand with the class in all of its struggles. Need to qualify this: true, revolutionary Bolsheviks -- there's a lot of fakes around, causing problems until a clear and trustworthy international leadership crystallizes. This will come by interaction between groups and people who come from very different organizational backgrounds. SDs are sectarian because they substitute themselves for the proletariat, betray it, and generally shit on it as unable, incapable, unprepared etc for the holy state of SD enlightenment. Bureaucratic, moralizing and intolerant are words that spring to mind to describe the disorganizing activities of the Social-Democrats. And the bureaucrats (of whatever school) can always be told by the vitriol they spray on the working class for being "unable, incapable and unprepared". The most recent name for this enlightenment seems to be 'market socialism' - well actually that has been overtaken by 'radical democracy'. My favourite is the "New Realism" of the British Labour Movement. Marvellous phrases they think up to cover their capitulation to capitalist exploitation. You see, they never ever consider the capitalist system as one based on exploitation. It's always a question of some unusual and aberrant minor injustice here or there that can be remedied by a little good will and some minor reform -- or where something real takes place, like the introduction of the welfare state or the nationalization of industries like steel, electricity, coal or the railways, it's always as a survival substitute for real revolution and always done in such a way as to be of more use to the bourgeoisie than the working class -- and it's always done in such a way as to ensure it can be undone again any time the bourgeoisie thinks it can get away with it. SDs are separated from Bolsheviks by method, theory and the barricade. True. Look at the history of 1917 and the huge gap that opened up between the Mensheviks (SDs) and the Bolsheviks (revolutionary Marxists). Many, perhaps most, Mensheviks (certainly of the leaders) ended up fighting against the transfer of property to the working class and out of the hands of the bourgeoisie. SDs and Bolshelviks can bloc in defence of workers democratic rights, but as soon as a pre-revolutionary situation emerges, SDs sellout, witness Luxemburg and Liebknecht. So the struggle for the leadership of the mass working class is central, and therefore also the discussion with the views that hold sway in the working class by virtue of being the views of its leadership. I don't think Rob, for instance, is really very aware of the similarities between some of his own principles and the principles of the leaders he understands to be betraying the historical needs of the class. Even if these views are petty-bourgeois or even just plain bourgeois, they are being put forward in the class and in parties of the class, and arguing against them is historically necessary. It's not the same as tackling the *same* arguments if they're put forward by pure bourgeois political forces. Marx dealt with such arguments in detail in inner-party discussions (Value, Price and Profit, or Critique of the Gotha Programme) not because they were valid or proletarian, but because even though they were bourgeois in origin they had taken root in the consciousness of the working class. Bolsheviks can claim responsibility for the only socialist revolution in history. Needs qualifying -- "consciously revolutionary Marxist" revolution in history. In my view there's no way we can deny the "socialist" label to the Chinese, Yugoslav, Vietnamese or even Cuban revolutions, given that they actually took power (except in Cuba) through a working-class (even though degenerate) leadership heading a mass popular army and proceeded to expropriate the bourgeoisie. SDs can claim responsiblity for stopping many more. So can the Stalinists -- all the above revolutions happened despite hostile (and often downright suicidal) advice and punitive actions from Moscow trying to stop them. The betrayal of the Stalinists is in fact greater on this front -- just look at the fate of France, Italy and Greece at the end of the war! And recently we've had the debacles of Iran, Nicaragua and South Africa, all following a mixture of Stalinist and petty-bourgeois strategies. Cut the shit and get down to some serious politics. Serious politics requires contact with the shit -- that's part of the price to be paid. When Rob writes: And
M-TH: Market socialism the 90s
If market socialism is such an attractive alternative, and vastly to be preferred to party dicatatorships, and capable of arising more or less spontaneously in periods of mass mobilization, then why a) did it not arise spontaneously in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, either there or in any of the other ex-workers states? b) this in spite of the convictions of such political leaders as Havel in ex-Czechoslovakia that it was realistic and that they could actually create a third way similar to but better than the Swedish model? Could it just be that it's an impossible illusion? Or is it that the real world is just too rough and polarized a place, and needs to be civilized to resemble the neatness of Karl Kautsky's desk before humanity will be able to make any progress worth the name? In that case, how long will we have to wait? Cheers, Hugh PS I'm referring to market socialism as a power alternative here, neither the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie we have today, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, the workers state, that has hitherto replaced it in actual historical developments in certain countries. I'm not referring to the greater or lesser use of market mechanisms made by a workers state in drawing up and refining the centralized plan. The question of the role of planning and conscious allocation of specific labour under capitalism (ie in the public sectors of certain welfare states and in the military and research establishments of even neo-liberal imperialist states), as a kind of superseding of capital within its own bounds is a related discussion but not directly relevant to what is usually meant by market socialism. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Market socialism the 90s
Hugh Rodwell wrote: If market socialism is such an attractive alternative, and vastly to be preferred to party dicatatorships, and capable of arising more or less spontaneously in periods of mass mobilization, then why a) did it not arise spontaneously in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, either there or in any of the other ex-workers states? b) this in spite of the convictions of such political leaders as Havel in ex-Czechoslovakia that it was realistic and that they could actually create a third way similar to but better than the Swedish model? Could it just be that it's an impossible illusion? Or is it that the real world is just too rough and polarized a place, and needs to be civilized to resemble the neatness of Karl Kautsky's desk before humanity will be able to make any progress worth the name? In that case, how long will we have to wait? And Doug Henwood responded: If you want to make an argument from spontaneous evolution, which it seems you are, Wonder what gave him that idea? That's precisely the view I was arguing against. Those who are able to conceive of a system of market socialism coming of its own accord in a period of weak or disputed class power -- a period of dual power so to speak, although this was hardly the case except potentially during the early 90s. then socialism everywhere is off the agenda, Well I didn't want to make the spontaneous evolution argument, but Doug just wants to repeat the socialism off the agenda argument. Mechanical stuff. He can't see it's being kept off the agenda by extreme measures of surveillance, repression and misinformation. and not just the market kind. My question, which Doug missed, was why market socialism, as such an attractive and powerful alternative in the eyes of some, didn't force itself on the world in the early 90s when conditions were at their most propitious for this kind of development -- if you believe in spontaneous developments and fight till your dying breath against organized, consciously led political change of the kind the Bolsheviks demonstrated in 1917. Yes, the world is a rough and polarized place, Polarized between which forces? Doug only sees triumphant imperialism everywhere. but I don't see any hint that your view of the world acknowledges that. He's blind. Polarized for us between the forces of the imperialist bourgeoisie and the international working class, acting in its various national frameworks. It's as if you expect everyone to wake up one day and sign on to the vanguard's agenda, and then all contradictions are resolved and heaven will have come to earth. This is just Doug's tired old straw man being raised yet again. Look at 1917 for the most telling historical refutation of this crap. After a few bourgies are shot, of course. Nice to know who Doug cares about. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Market socialism the 90s
Michael P writes: Can't say I'm a very happy left social democrat, Why ever not? but in the absence, of a mass, radical democratic left, I'll take working in the less reality impaired precincts of the social democratic swamp. Try draining it. At least they have read and thought and organized, more successfully in bourgeois democracies than your crew has. "Successfully" -- I like that. Presumably meaning they made it to the fleshpots of government. Great intellects like Ramsey McDonald, great killers of workers leaders like Ebert, great voters of war credits to Prussian Junkerdom like Kautsky, great removers of civic rights from colonial citizens like Harold Wilson, great drinkers like George Brown, great witch-hunters like Willy Brandt, great defenders of public property and welfare facilities like Lange/Douglas, great sellers of cannons to India and concealers of bribes like Olof Palme. With socialists like this, who needs tories? I almost forgot that adorably well-read, well-thought and well-organized connaisseur of the EU fleshpots, Neil Kinnock. And the defender of the Greek Junta and the US slaughter in Vietnam -- oh dear, he was so memorable I did go and forget his name -- the one with the eyebrows. They've adapted so successfully to bourgeois democracy in fact, that they're outdoing the bourgeois parties in their attacks on civic rights and basic living standards, the unemployed and the poor. Oh, and we really can't pass over the ethical Robin Cook, the butcher of Kosova, and bugger-lugs, his master, or the ineffably pre-eminent Jack Straw, who so successfully organized Gusano Pinochet back to his carrionized nation and away from the bourgeois courts of Europe -- now that was a reality-oriented measure if ever we saw one, not a single phrase of fake leftist triumphalism from those lips. Of course, if Gusano Pinochet had shot a few bourgies, in Doug's charming words, we'd have never heard the end of it. But fortunately for the Social-Democrats of the world, he didn't, only loony lefties and the odd American political tourist. Cheers, Hugh PS Doug's being castigated as a left authoritarian could have two reasons. The first is understandable -- it's his history of tailing the CPUSA, evidenced on this list by his defence of the good old days of the party in the 1950s. The other is probably more relevant if MP is representative of the intellectual milieu there, and is merely the fact that Doug does occasionally make reference to Marx and his ideas in his arguments, and can quote the man accurately enough to show he's read him. PPS I'd like to hear what Mike's take on Market Socialism is, now that the obligatory sparring is taken care of, and to learn what the deeply read, thought and organized SoDs of the world were doing about introducing a sensible, reality-friendly socialism in Russia and Eastern Europe in the 1990s. The Swedish SoDs, for instance, were only interested in getting Swedish companies set up in the Baltic region as fast as was humanly possible -- oh, and teaching the benighted heathen the mechanics of Swedish bureaucracy -- how to swing a gavel at a meeting. Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: superexploitation
George G writes: I wouldn't mind your comments on this particular issue related to Marxist economics. In a discussion on the situation of the working class under the neo-liberal push towards globalization and the effect that this is having on the people's of the developing countries. It was pointed out that not only is modern capitalism exploiting its workers but is also "super exploiting" immigrant workers at home (western industrialized countries) and women in the workplace who suffer a double burden of exploitation at work and then at home with the second unpaid shift. Is this an accurate term? I believe workers can be exploited to various degrees under capitalism but either you are exploited or you are not. As amatter of fact I also believe that in strict Marxist terms, you will find that the worker on the production line of General Motors or Ford making automobiles for over $20.00 cdn/hr. produces more surplus value than the underpaid worker flipping burgers at McDonald's and is therefore exploited more. Is the autoworker then "super exploited?" I don't think so, they are just exploited at a higher rate. I understand the concept that immigrant workers and women in the workplace face particular and special problems but I don't think you can use the term "super exploitation" to describe it properly. It really depends on how you use the term. It might be useful to describe the heightened exploitation of groups such as women, immigrants and other oppressed minorities, in the sense that not only are they being exploited as all wage-slaves are exploited, but they are also having the price they get for paid for their labour-power pressed below what should be normal for that sector (women are expected to survive by living on a partner's or parent's wages, immigrants are just skinned because of their weak bargaining position). This is separate from the issue of double burdens on women, which involves gender discrimination and the whole issue of "invisible" infrastructural production of a new generation of labour-power, where the costs are silently passed on to an oppressed group. Otherwise it's not easy to say whether more surplus value is being extracted from the car worker or the hamburger jockey. I'd say that since high labour input usually equals greater value, then more value is produced in the service sectors -- but few people in those sectors see any of it, whether they're capitalists or workers, because most of it is siphoned off by the operation of the equalization of profits to sectors with a higher composition of capital -- what I've previously referred to as the value pump from services and petty agriculture over to high tech and low labour sectors. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)
Rob huffs and puffs a bit: C'mon Hugh! I argue that a socialist economy might need the market mechanism (for I can see nothing else that would do the particular job of producing and distributing use values) and you tell me there's going to be abundance, that "there is *no* scarcity", that "Market socialism is no socialism. If you have the power to coerce the market to behave in a socially responsible way, then you have the power to dump the bourgeoisie and its relations of production, and you don't need half-measures," and that "Market socialism is a cowardly utopian cop-out." You were the one saying that there's plenty to go round as of right now, the only problem is the political one of getting it distributed right. I just agreed. I didn't argue there was "abundance", I argued (as you did) that there was "no scarcity" -- that's not the same. And the question of the power needed to introduce any form of "market socialism" that would make any sense is the most important issue, and one on which we seem to agree, whatever the caveats on your part. The cop-out for me is to speak of "market socialism" without a change of class ownership in other words without a revolution in political and property relations. And now you seem to be saying you always agreed with me on substance, According to your clarifications, it seemed that way. but that the mere reliance upon the market mechanism for the little matter of allocating use values does not constitute 'market socialism'! I think we probably disagree on what constitutes *reliance*, but this hasn't come out too clearly in the exchange. The allocation of use values under proto-socialism would be primarily by plan, especially where labour input is concerned, whereas the adjustment of the plan would be carried out with the help of feedback mechanisms such as market response and the other organizational responses I detailed. The plan would take consumer needs etc as ascertained by various conscious and unconscious mechanisms of monitoring these, including the market, into consideration in the first place. But the main priorities would be set by political decisions. That's a pretty dry old argument about semantics, I reckon, and I'm too busy a boy. I still don't think you've defined the relationship of what you call market socialism sufficiently clearly in relation to the state needed for it to operate or the kind of regime under which it would provide optimal development. And those factors are central political issues, not mere semantics. I've criticised everything from the April Theses to the NEP on this very list. Ask Chas'n'Dave! They went to no small effort in trying to put me back on the straight'n'narrer on this stuff. Good on 'em, too. But it didn't take. So? "A role to play in regulating some aspects etc" sounds fine, but does it constitute Market Socialism?? What about all the Bruno Bauers and Austro-Marxists etc with their virulent hatred of Bolshevism -- how would their kind of Market Socialism ever bring about the necessary transfer of ownership to the organized working class? It's not theirs I was suggesting. That's clear enough! And after all the huffing and puffing comes the good bit: Not that I'm a Bolshevik. But I do hold we'd need something of the magnitude of a revolution to attain market socialism, yeah. So if you like the idea of market socialism, you like the idea of the revolution needed to bring it into being, and the only question left is how to promote such a revolution. That's my lot, I'm afraid. I've a lecture to write and a bed to crawl into - in that order, alas. Sweet dreams! Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)
Doug Henwood quotes me: This is clearly the stumbling block. Joanna sees a kind of transitional phase between bourgeois ownership of the means of production and proletarian ownership. As if the bourgeoisie would let go of them without some other force immediately taking over the reins of ownership. Some equally powerful social force that is, that is in a concrete position to do such a thing. The petty-bourgeoisie has no chance. No, it's got to be either the proletariat through its political representatives or nobody. Again, read Trotsky on the actual development of the revolution in Russia in 1917. and responds: Let me try to be constructive. Sweden or the U.S. or Australia in the year 2000 are very little like Russia in 1917. But the fundamental mechanism of exploitation, the extraction of surplus value by way of wage-slavery, is exactly the same, and needs to be eradicated just as much today as then and in Marx's time. So I don't see why or how Trotsky can be very enlightening to us today. Doug never has and never will, until he accepts Marx's analysis of the process of exploitation under capitalism and the consequences of this -- a society in which all historical development is rooted in the resolution or further aggravation of class contradictions by way of class struggle. But let me leave that old objection aside for now and ask pointedly: what do you mean, in some degree of detail, by the proletariat asserting ownership over the MoP? Representatives of the proletarian government and its agencies controlling the legal and physical instruments constituting the most important forces of production. Ie being the socially acknowledged owners and operators of the means of production and able to mobilize the labour needed to run them. Through a small, and now nonexistent vanguard party? Not non-existent. Just small. Same as the Bolsheviks were small but existent between 1905 and 1917. The MoP are owned largely by institutional investors and run by professional managers: what happens to them, not to mention their armies and police? Look at every revolution in history. The old ruling class packs its bags and runs, stands and fights, or buries its head in the sand and hides. Each side looks after its own. In history the worst atrocities have always been perpetrated by the old exploiting class desperately trying to defend its ill-gotten gains and to perpetuate its unjust privileges. Doug keeps forgetting what a terrible minority the exploiters actually are. If their mercenaries desert them, they're nothing but a bag of maggots (gusanos, as the Latinos so charmingly term them). And their mercenaries do desert them: their armies and police dissolve. This happens even if there is no viable political leadership ready to effect the necessary political and social transformation of society, as witness events in Albania a couple of years ago, among a thousand other examples of this happening this century. Will there be summary executions of portfolio managers and boards of directors? Maybe -- lots of things happen in war. But you can bet that control of such excesses by the political leaderships will be strict on the proletarian side and non-existent or even bloodthirsty on the side of the exploiters. Just take the Finnish civil war as an example -- a good read on this is Vaino Linna's trilogy Here Under the Pole Star (sorry I don't know the title in English). Will the rude mechanicals occupy the boardrooms? Why not? Them and specialists from the old regime who decide to cooperate and foreign specialists coming in to help. For an example here take events in Chile before super-Maggot Pinochet drowned the organized Chilean working class in blood in 1973. Or even look at experiments taking place as enclave worker-ownership under capitalism -- the examples of Lucas in England and Lip in France. How does this proletariat, or representatives of this proletariat (chosen and accountable by unspecified means, of course), insert itself into the existing structures of ownership and control? The degree of development of democratic methods and accountability in the workers movement and in the parties vying for its leadership will be very important in deciding the adequacy of appointments made in this respect. As to the insertion, see above in my first point. An economy is like a ship, it has a helm and someone's got to take it. There are certain things a crew has got to do. If the normal performers of these tasks are removed, someone else will have to do it, and obviously their skills will vary. Some will be better than the old guard, some worse. But if the old captain just got his way by flogging and keel-hauling, nobody's going to complain about a little learning curve if the old bastard's being dragged along in the wake of the ship to get a taste of his own medicine. A firm like Ford or IBM has a vast and complex network of plants, offices, and suppliers around the world - how would the proles go about
M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)
Rob quotes important bits of Trotsky relating to the market. This doesn't mean that Trotsky in any way viewed the system he is talking about as *market socialism*. He's talking about a dictatorship of the proletariat in which the smooth running of central planning depends to a great extent on accurate feedback, and the market is one aspect of this feedback. If state provision isn't meeting demand, market responses will be one of the ways helping to reveal this. As will reports from consumer organizations, trades unions, sectoral research units, and local offices of the central planning authority, etc. Now, Rob, would you care to say if you think a) that Trotsky is in fact arguing for market socialism as an *alternative* to the dictatorship of the proletariat with centralized planning and centralized control of finance and foreign trade; b) that Bolshevism-Leninism had on its programme the immediate liquidation of the market from day one of the October Revolution; and c) that market socialism is more than just another way of saying that market mechanisms will have an important but not decisive role to play in the operations of proto-socialist society. This will make it clear to me, to yourself and to everybody else if we're just playing with words or in fact talking about an *alternative* regime or even an *alternative* state to what was available in the early Soviet Union. If we're talking alternatives then we can get down to discussing what the Bolsheviks should have done instead, ie criticize their programme and their methods of implementing it. If not, then we can get on with applying the lessons of that period to the various programmes and methods on offer in the workers movement today. From the huffing and puffing going on it sounds as if there's more at stake than the realistic acknowledgement made by Trotsky here and by the Left Opposition in general including Preobrazhensky in the New Economics that the market will have a role to play in regulating some aspects of supply and demand under proto-socialism. Is there?? If there isn't, why all the aggro? An awful lot of this stuff was thrashed out in the party discussions in the Soviet Union at the end of the civil wars and imperialist invasions as it became necessary to adjust to a period of harsh isolation in the world market without the hoped-for but unrealized support of a revolution in an advanced capitalist country such as Germany. Preobrazhensky's essential book (essential for Marxists) was part of all this, a kind of summing up of the turn from war communism and militarized labour to the NEP and the effect this had on the development of the Soviet economy all seen in a Marxist theoretical perspective. For a perspective during the actual wars nothing can beat Trotsky's book "Terrorism and Communism" (against Kautsky's book of the same name), preferably read in conjunction with Lenin's polemic against Kautsky from the same period The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. Trotsky's little book on the New Course also deals with this period a bit further into the turn. Cheers, Hugh Rob wrote, responding to me: You: Market socialism is a cowardly utopian cop-out. Anything to avoid the life-and-death confrontation with the bourgeoisie that creating the preconditions for real socialism will involve. Me: Market Socialism ain't gonna come about without fundamental and traumatic social change, Hugh. And it might just be a promising candidate for just the precondition of which you speak. You: See above. Fundamental social change that stops short at market socialism is a dry-as-dust academic illusion worthy of a Kautsky. And Trotsky: 'It is necessary for each state-owned factory, with its technical director, to be subject not only to control from the top ... but also from below, by the market, which will remain the regulator of the state economy for a long time to come.' (at 4th Comintern Congress 1922) And Trotsky again: 'The innumerable live participants in the economy ... must make known their needs and their relative intensity not only through statistical compilations of planning commissions, but directly through the pressure of demand and supply. The plan is checked and to a considerable extent realised through the market. The regulation over the market must base itself on the tendencies showing themselves in it, must prove their economic rationality through commercial calculation.' (*Byulleten Oppozitsii* November 1932) Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)
Dave B writes: Further to Hugh's. Isnt capitalism generalised commodity production which includes labour-power i.e. wage-labour? Very much so. Prior to capitalism commodity production was secondary to use- value production, and typically not by means of wage labour. Therefore the socially necessary labour time was not set by abstract labour realised as commodities entering into the value of labour-power but by concrete labour. No. But the sphere of commodity production took the form of enclaves, in which there were a lot of small producers who owned their own means of production, and a good many who owned slave-labour into the bargain. But the value of a commodity of any kind is *never* set by concrete labour, by the *quality* of the labour, but by the abstract necessary labour required as input. It's just that the determination of this input is terribly distorted in other modes of production by comparison with capitalism and its "free" wage-labour. As for post-capitalism, labour power will cease to be a commodity as soon as its value is no longer set by the market and set by the plan. The plan may use market mechanism's as tools but under the dictorship of the proletariat, like state capitalism in Lenin's usage. Therefore there will probably considerable commodity exchange but like pre-cap society, not the production of Labour- power as a commodity. Yes. With the rider that productivity will need to be higher than that attained by capitalism (at least with respect to the economy as a whole) in order for the setting of prices by planned labour input to supersede the pressures of the Law of Value working through the market. This was the big economic reality that made it so difficult to control prices and planning in the early Soviet Union and led to the excesses of kulakism etc. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Capital is wrong (production for sale, or not)
But to say this is to say that productivity is a purely bourgeois concept. Yes, it is. Which is crap. No, it isn't. Oh yes it is!!! Bourgeois productivity is a purely bourgeois concept. Productivity as such isn't at all. Smallest possible input of materials and labour time for greatest possible output of product over given period. That's the aggregate output of product for the whole economic system. The whole driving force behind history according to Marx's perspective is the development of the forces of production bursting the fetters placed upon them by the various relations of production they operate within -- with each new change of skin, the creature growing apace (human social production) is able to move a bit more freely and live a bit more richly. But as the new skin (the most recent mode of production) grows tighter and tighter -- failing to expand with the growth of the creature inside it -- then the freedom and wealth become more and more contradictory, until this restrictive skin bursts in its turn. Capitalism has proved to be a more flexible skin than slavery or feudalism, but at the moment it's about as conducive to human happiness as a condom the size of a thimble or a tight bra with spikes lining the inside of the cups. So to speak. Well, without being quite so rude to any thimble-dicked Thaxists who might be listening, I'd agree with all that, but I don't see what this has to do with intensifying exploitation, Hugh. Since capitalism no longer expands spontaneously, so to say, it has to cannibalize itself, one capital expanding at the cost of the cannibalized capitals -- the boobs grow, but the spikes just get sharper and longer. Part of this cannibalizing expansion is the increase of exploitation. And who's going to handed the responsibility and power to drive us that bit harder, anyway? Don't get this point at all. What do you mean "power to drive us that bit harder"? ...a way that did nothing to develop the voluntary associative relations of production needed if the new proto-socialist economy was to be coaxed along till it could stand on its own two feet against the hostile pressures of the world market. These hostile pressures, in one simple word, were productivity. Preobrazhensky's book on the New Economics makes this abundantly clear. I don't see how a situation in which the bourgeoisie has already been expropriated, should be one in which we are to be made to work harder. If you're in a proto-socialist enclave, then the bourgeoisie will only have been partially expropriated and you'll still be subject to the pressures of the world market. As for the "made to work harder" here, I understand this point, and you're barking up the wrong gum tree. The need is not to work harder, but to get a better social return for the work that is done. The main need is to organize social production better so that all the labour available in a society is of as high a quality as possible and applied to as socially necessary and useful products as possible. If the priorities are settled by a democratically and cooperatively decided plan, then the chances of the work done being both willing and enthusiastic are that much better. And there's all the difference in the world between "wanting to work better" and "being made to work harder". Commodity production is historically speaking a very efficient way of getting things made for less and less cost in terms of materials and labour. In my humble opinion, it's the most efficient way there'll ever be. Well here we disagree completely, unless you mean "efficient" in a bourgeois sense, in which case it's a complete tautology. The main leap in efficiency will come with conscious planning of use of resources -- none of the waste associated with gluts and dearths created by the blindness of capitalist production for profit, or the narrowly restricted field of production dictated by the short-term bourgeois disease of market failure. Just compare the waste of fuel and effort involved in individual heating units in every home and workshop in an area versus one great power works providing district heating for that area, or individual fossil-fueled generators in a town compared with a fully generalized electricity supply. As long as you confine yourself to their way of measuring stuff. What's cost for them? Money. What's efficiency for them? Exploitation. What's a product for them? Anything from a depleted uranium round to nose-hair clippers. Cost for us should be infingements on people's freedom. Efficiency should be about the balance between self-fulfillment and meeting the needs of physical social self reproduction. And products should be about doing somebody somewhere a bit of good. That's all a question of political power. The repressive systems keeping things the way they are have to be removed by political action before the economic changes can take place. What's inefficient about capitalism is that it takes our time and energy
M-TH: Re: fixed capital
Jerry quotes from Capital II: For instance, consider the following, from Ch. 8 , on the subject of labour expended on the repair of fixed capital: "The fixed capital however requires also a positive expenditure of labour for its maintenance in good repair. The machinery must be cleaned from time to time. It is a question here of additional labour without which the machinery becomes useless, of merely warding off the noxious influences of the elements, which are inseparable from the process of production; hence it is a question of keeping the machinery literally in working order. It goes without saying that the normal durability of fixed capital is calculated on the supposition that all the conditions under which it can perform its functions normally during that time are fulfilled, just as we assume, in placing a man's life at 30 years on the average, that he will wash himself. It is here not a question of replacing the labour contained in the machine, but of constant additional labour made necessary by its use. It is not a question of labour performed by the machine, but of labour spent on it, of labour in which it is not an agent of production but raw material. The capital expended for this labour must be classed as circulating capital, although it does not enter into the labour-process proper to which the product owes its existence. This labour must be continually expended in production, hence its value must be continually replaced by that of the product. The capital invested in it belongs in that part of circulating capital which has to cover the unproductive costs and is to be distributed over the produced values according to an annual average calculation." and asks: So: is labour that is expended on the repair of constant fixed capital to be classified as part of [constant] circulating capital or part of variable capital? Furthermore, how can labour be "classed" as [constant] circulating capital? What then of the difference between "dead" and "living" labour? Marx is definitely talking about labour here, not labour-power. It's labour not *constituting* circulating capital, but as *expended on* keeping the fixed capital working. When he writes "the capital invested in it belongs in that part of circulating capital which has to cover the unproductive costs", he could have expanded it to say: "the capital spent on the labour-power needed to produce this labour" etc. Writing "the capital invested in it (the labour)" is a bit elliptical. It's an unproductive but necessary cost. As Jerry says: it becomes a little bit more complex when we discuss the distinction between [constant] fixed and "fluid" capital in Vol. 2 of _Capital_. but this is a case in which the commodity/capital/labour/labour-power relationships are made opaque by operating in the murky depths of the sphere of production rather than in the open sunshine of the marketplace. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: fixed capital?
Russ writes: This commoditiness is social, it is not in the object itself. It extends only so long as the object is _available_ for exchange. Robinsonades are always useful here: when a buccaneer steals some treasure it is still a commodity, but when he buries his treasure it ceases to be one. When Crusoe digs it up it does not become a commodity. Only when Crusoe returns with his new found booty to a system of commodity exchange does it become once more a commodity. Fine. And it's the same with factories I guess. But I wonder whether, from a Marxist angle, if this is all an absurdity: can capital _ever_ be truely fixed? The reason he called it fixed was that unlike labour-power it wasn't a factor in the variance between M' and M''. Fixed capital just passes on its value to the commodity it's applied to, it adds nothing new. So it's only fixed in terms of generating value. Variable capital, on the other hand, exchanges value for the commodity labour-power, employs the labour-power and bingo out the other side comes more value than was put in, because the value of the labour-power employed was less than the value of the labour the labour-power employed was able to add to the commodities in question. C' with a given value becomes C'' with a greater value, and the solution to this magical equation, where something appears to come from nothing is in the exchange of labour-power with capital. The capital invested in labour-power actually buys the right to the labour produced by the labour-power, hence the value coming out is more than the value put in, hence the capital invested here appears to be variable. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: fixed capital?
On Thu, 16 Mar 2000 14:25:56 +0100 Hugh Rodwell said: ... And it's the same with factories I guess. But I wonder whether, from a Marxist angle, if this is all an absurdity: can capital _ever_ be truely fixed? The reason he called it fixed was that unlike labour-power it wasn't a factor in the variance between M' and M''. Fixed capital just passes on its value to the commodity it's applied to, it adds nothing new. So it's only fixed in terms of generating value. Minor point, but you're thinking of constant capital here, not fixed capital alone. Constant divides into fixed and circulating capital; fixed capital is that which lasts for more than one production cycle, and therefore passes on only part of its value each time. Walter Daum Of course, Walter's right. Into the corner with the pointy hat, Hugh! It was the phrasing of Russ's point that got me off on that tack: And it's the same with factories I guess. But I wonder whether, from a Marxist angle, if this is all an absurdity: can capital _ever_ be truely fixed? I automatically contrasted variable with its opposite -- constant -- and forgot the different use Marx makes of "fixed", following bourgeois usage (ie fixed vs circulating capital) as Walter points out. Russ's point is that everything flows/panta rhei, except very occasionally and under pretty strong constraints. I was pointing to the fixity of constant capital vs the apparent mutability of variable capital. constantnothing comes of nothing variablesomething comes of nothing spontaneous generation which is the point of the cycle we're at at the moment with the IT bubble doing a sort of Big Bang in reverse -- we're in the super-expansion phase, it'll soon be just plain old expansion, very briefly (if at all), then the bang itself, then silence. Buy gold (and a safe to keep it in, and a cutter to chop it up with, and a gun to defend it with)! Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Capital and Capital
When I wrote: Selling your own labour-power is not where power and prosperity is at. Selling other people's labour is. I was asked: Well, unless you're an artist or a novelist -- someone who produces something completely "useless". Or? And I replied: The petty-bourgeoisie is in-between the bourgeoisie and the working class, owning its own means of production but using its own labour-power to produce the labour needed to finish the commodity, which it then sells for its value (allowing for the effects on value/price allotted to the individual commodity by the process of equalization of the rate of profit etc), appropriating this to itself. So it keeps the surplus-value, ie the value over and above what is required to pay for the elements going into the commodity, including labour-power. The working class doesn't own the means of production, and only gets paid the value of its labour-power, not the labour it put into the commodity. The bourgeoisie owns the means of production and appropriates the value realized by the sale of the commodity, but doesn't put its own labour into the commodity. Artists or novelists fall into the petty-bourgeois category. If they are at the lower end they end up exploiting themselves. If at the higher end (some artist employing assistants, like the workshops of the renaissance, or Enid Blyton,say) they use the labour-power of others as well as themselves, so they get most of their wealth from exploitation. The petty-bourgeoisie is not what it was. Its ranks have been thoroughly proletarianized, so that formerly independent operators are now employees, hence the large new intermediate layers of specialists (doctors and engineers, say). Of course the recent neo-liberal reaction has attempted to recreate formally petty-bourgeois groups back out of these proletarianized hordes, hence the new phenomenon of independent consultants who used to be employees. In historical terms, in relation to the general development of the means of production, this is like a wave or two falling back while the tide is coming in. Choose your moment and you could claim the tide had started to turn, but forced to take the whole process into account, you'd get egg on your face. As for the "uselessness" of a commodity, that's purely in the eye of the purchaser. Any commodity that's bought has use-value in the economic as far as the transaction is concerned. A commodity that gets sold has both exchange value and use value, full stop. A commodity that doesn't, don't. This even goes for such things as poison gases, plutonium, warheads, landmines, Maggie Thatcher knick-knacks and the products of the entertainment and media industry. Perhaps someone could add another angle or two to give it some colour and 3-D, so it really helps. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Capital and Capital
What else does Marx do in "Capital" besides offend Owzyerfather's complacent notions of Common Sense? Well, among other things he gives us the most adequate analysis yet provided of capitalism in the form of a NATURAL HISTORY OF THE COMMODITY. The transformation of the product of human labour into the commodity is presented very briefly in Capital itself. Why? Because it's dealt with so thoroughly in previous, preparatory works such as the Grundrisse and A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. In this presentation it is clear that the commodity form is historically bound up with certain modes of production, before which it didn't exist, and after which it will cease to exist. The mode of production which takes the commodity from being an enclave in an alien form of society (such as the slave-owning or serf-owning modes of production) to becoming the dominant and all-pervading factor in society is capitalism. This is also the mode of production which develops the commodity form as far as it can go, taking the forces of production to the point at which they begin to tear apart the relations of production, such as individual private property. Marx sees the historical sweep of this process as early as the Communist Manifesto in 1848. He is able to explain it adequately 20 years later in Capital, having in the meantime discovered the key in the distinction between the labour that produces value which is what is paid for the commodity in the market and the labour-power that produces the labour, this labour-power being what the worker gets paid for in the market rather than being paid for the labour he produces. The scientific analysis of the capitalist mode of production is also the natural history of the one key commodity just mentioned -- labour-power. In Capital Book I in the section on Primitive Capitalist Accumulation, and in the Grundrisse in the section on Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production Marx shows how the necessary historical precondition for the emergence of capitalism as a mode of production was the creation of a work force consisting of free labour-power (free of the social constraints and ties of slavery and feudalism, free of the ties to the land of the peasant or to his means of production of the craftsman). In other words the creation of A WORK-FORCE BRINGING ITSELF TO MARKET AS A COMMODITY. And what does Marx show us as the secret of the natural history of the commodity? Its transformations in the process of production. Forget the surface egalitarianism of the sphere of circulation -- these can be dealt with later in Book II and in the shenanigans of interest-bearing capital in Book III, for instance. In Book I he shows the way in which an initial commodity is transformed in the production process by the application of unpaid labour (remember only the workers' labour-power is paid for, not their labour) into a new commodity with a greater value -- C' to C''. This transformation of the commodity -- and everything in capitalism is a commodity, that's its distinctive characteristic -- is the secret of the transformation that everyone sees (except the Communist Think-Tank?) and is astounded by -- M' to M'' -- money growing apparently magically into more than it was before, taking on a life of its own, self-expanding capital. That's it. So either Pennyfogger doesn't know what he's saying, like Duehring, or he's doing something really nasty like Vogt. Or maybe he just had bad teachers. It's OK to skim the tabloids for Think-Tank Factoids, but it's impossible to skim Marx. Now let me return to the miniscule world of semi-consumed and pretty clapped-out commodities that represents my own share of the wealth of society and mocks me and mine every day with our lack of social power and prosperity. Selling your own labour-power is not where power and prosperity is at. Selling other people's labour is. To abolish one, you must abolish both. For a world free of wage-slavery! Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Livingstone stands in London
At 10:28 07/03/00 -0500, you wrote: If this guy passes Hugh's test, he ain't no sellout. CB He's not a sell out. He is courageous and shrewd. But that does not stop him being an opportunist. If he wins, and it is more than likely, since he will get the largest first preference votes, and will get the largest second preference votes from everyone else, including the Conservative! then he will incorporate protest votes once again into the New Labour machinery. They will make some accommodation with him, and when his term expires, the party machinery will reabsorb him. And I should warn Charles that Livingstone supported military intervention in Kosovo, though he did not support the intervention that occurred. Chris B It's not a static question. It's a question of a movement being built around Livingstone's candidacy that might well be able to use a few fundamental democratic, anti-bourgeois slogans to gather behind it all the popular disaffection and hatred for New Labour's neo-liberal Tory policies that exists in London. The outcome in terms of votes cast and local government measures will be less interesting than the shift produced in the balance of forces between a radicalizing mass movement and all the various shades of manipulative self-seekers in the Labour party machine and Livingstone's immediate entourage. Anyone seriously interested in building a solid revolutionary working-class party and solid revolutionary working-class movements will want to get stuck in here. Anyone not seeing this as a heaven-sent opportunity will earn themselves the title of armchair pedants at worst or sponsors of individual anarchistic heroics at best. It's also obvious from the red-baiting that's getting started now, and the horror felt by Livingstone himself at being taken seriously when he pays lip-service to socialism, that the intervention of revolutionary Marxists in this campaign will not be easy. In other words, a real and exciting challenge lies ahead. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Livingstone stands in London
Chris B informs us that Ken Livingstone has taken the plunge, broken his word, and announced he is standing for the new post of Mayor of London, against the official Labour candidate Frank Dobson. Very briefly cos I'm absolutely whacked... While Livingstone has indeed gone back on what he said earlier to the party machine, he now argues that the monstrous perversion of democracy in the Labour selection process gives him no option but to run independently so that the people of London have the chance to make their wishes felt. If breaking his word is a crime, he says, then manipulating the selection race the way the New Labour leadership and party apparatus did was a far worse crime, and now it is up to the people of London to demonstrate by their votes which crime they think is worse. Two things to watch for: 1) A campaign of personal vilification of Livingstone unparallelled in recent political history, certainly in Britain and probably in most imperialist countries (it'll quite possibly approach Malaysia in its viciousness, though whether Blair will be able to find an excuse to beat Livingstone up and get him thrown in jail is unclear -- mind you, an administration that can find the chirpy Pinochet to be so decrepit and on his last legs that he's not fit to stand trial but only to be sent on a transcontinental flight home will probably be able to invent something. And Straw has shown he has the character and inclination to do so...) 2) A campaign of red-baiting (given the certainty that most of the left will come out and fight actively for Livingstone as mayor) that will probably beat anything since the miners' strike and probably even that and much that went before it. Blair and his crew will probably leave Maggie herself gasping at their brazen disregard for truth and their mind-numbing humbug, and that takes some doing considering that the old witch holds the Guinness world record in that department (mind you, Uncle Joe is the all-time unparallelled master in the discipline, but he is hors de concours). G'nite, sleep tight, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Monthy Review - friend or foe
Doug H amazed us all by writing about the shenanigans at the Monthly Review: Internal disputes. My lips are sealed, except to say it's more a clash of personalities than political principles. Such loyalty! And yet so revealing! Now let's see -- a megaphone for bureaucratic-academic scepticism exposed as a hotbed of petty-bourgeois intrigue and backstabbing. Gee whiz... Only thing that bothers me is that Doug is claiming to be able to recognize political principles here. Well, I suppose when he kicked me out of his own p-b incubator of bureaucratic-academic scepticism for making some pretty self-evident pro-revolutionary remarks -- about the astounding achievement of the Bolsheviks and the October Revolution in turning around the war-weary peasant masses of Russia so that they returned to the trenches and fought heroically and voluntarily for three years against an unprecedented onslaught of imperialist invasion involving fifteen states and civil war on four fronts -- that showed that he is in fact capable of recognizing revolutionary principles -- and acting resolutely to shut them up and shut them out. Let's all hope for his sake that no revolution happens in the near future, and that a benign regime comes into power in the States that reduces taxes on small publishing enterprises. Who knows, maybe such an administration would have a cozy little position for him that would give him the nest egg he needs to speed his early retirement. Leaving the field free for a new batch of bureaucratic-academic p-b intriguers to plunge their scoops into the pot and swill down some gravy in their turn, for ever and ever or as the LTs might say in saecula saeculorum, amen. What inspiration for the present struggle, what visions of hope for the future, what illuminating guidance for the working and poor masses on their path to a better world than capitalism (strong or weak) could ever offer them! Let's drink a toast to Doug and the Manhattan Road to Socialism! (I think that bottle of leftover Millennium bubbly is probably suitably vinegary by now...) Cheers, Hugh PS When you come to think of it, it's amazing what a burgeoning institution this academic sceptical left has grown into. They're a bit like the rich bourgeoisie in India -- there are so many of them that if they flock together busily enough and shut their eyes tight enough, they're able to pretend that the rest of society doesn't exist, except as some kind of necessary but basically decorative backdrop to their own magnificence. ciao4now, M --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Counter-factual?
Rob writes: Time for Doug (to whom, many thanks for letting Hugh's little gratuity glide past) to put his finger to the pulse, I reckon. Wassa story, Doug? Not gratuitous, pregnant with significance as always. However, why wake a sleeping dog to tell it it looks so peaceful when it's asleep? Anyway, if all the time wasted on embracing the pomo wraithes had been put to better use by Rob (and every other academic who danced even more willingly to the pipe of p-b fashion), what would they have written about instead? And what difference would it have made? Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Erratum
Er, perhaps I should point out it's the sentiment I find so pleasing, not necessarily the sanguine 'new economy' exceptionalism implicit there-in. Human work (as opposed to the inhuman work that rules the roost today) will ever be part of the world, and no-one should be denied their whack. Being 'overplaced' unto social irrelevance and private impotence is itself the thing that is obscene - 'guaranteeing the survival' of those we first throw away is a rather incoherent and (I'd've thought) unchristian way to go about doing the lord's work ... Rob There you go. A huge material difference in perspective and policy with even the most radical of the cassocked crew. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Our Mainstream
An example in point, my favorite list (as Rob knows) is currently discussing whether Liberation Theology still exists! Many on this list seem to think that LT has almost totally evaporated off the face of the planet. If they were living in Texas as I do, they would quickly see that the only liberal/ Left activity in a town or city comes out of the Catholic Church. Well, a former high-school student of mine spent a year in California, and there the only alternatives she could see for young people were drugs and Church. After a close shave with drugs she got her company at the church. But there are workers and unions everywhere. So while others are enmeshed in Kosovo or East Timor, the practical question down this way, is how to build a movement where the largest component of activists are nuns?! What's even worse, these nuns and priests are the most active people working nationally for building an antiwar movement in the US, or ending the death penalty! James Connolly, the Irish Marxist revolutionary, has lots of good stuff on this problem of doing socialist work with Catholics. Thanks again, Rob, for inviting me to participate in Thaxis. But what an unfortunate name this is, to attract more plebian types to talk. It sounds like some sort of disease. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Anyway, given the appalling state of other so-called Marxist so-called discussion lists I don't much care what the name is as long as the discussion is free and hard, and you don't have to suck up to people like the two Louis's or keep on the right side (pun intended) of short-tempered blinkered sectarians like Cox or Henwood. Thank Christ there's at least one even-tempered and tolerant (German) American administering a number of Marxist lists (Hans Ehrbar) or people could get the idea that the only Marxist discussion permitted in a US Net framework was boneheaded Stalinism or blockheaded petty-bourgeois academic (or in the case of Louis Proyecchhht, would-be academic) Menshevism. By the way, Rob seems to imply that the Nicaraguan revolution was defeated by the imperialist guns. This is utterly wrong. It was defeated by non-Marxist, non-socialist, non-revolutionary leadership, both locally and internationally. The usual chorus of don'ts resounded from Moscow and Havana, and were listened to in Managua, preventing the spread of the revolution to the other countries of Central America. The formation of independent revolutionary trade unions was outlawed, many of their cofounders being deported to Panamanian jails for the crime of being foreign and Trotskyist (members of the Simon Bolivar brigade). The Cuban leaders in their day didn't have to listen to this shit from Moscow or their later selves, so they went ahead and formed a workers state, inadequate and nationally deformed though it was. The Nicaraguan leaders didn't change the state, and the people of that country and its neighbours paid the penalty for this treachery, which put the Central American revolution back by decades. As for Che in Bolivia, the whole strategy was wrong. The Cuban revolution wasn't carried out by impoverished peasants but by a combined rural and urban proletariat in direct defiance of both local and imperialist exploiters. The Cuban CP fell with Batista. What was missing in Cuba was a revolutionary Marxist party to organize the working class for its own liberation and run a non-bureaucratic regime that would be able to carry the revolution to other countries in Central and South America. Despite its weaknesses, the Cuban revolution was a huge inspiration to many Latinos -- as the failed Bolivian revolution had been a few years earlier in 1952. Che's adventure in Bolivia was suicidal voluntarism -- the Bolivian revolution is a creature of the mines and the cities (and nowadays the coca-producing poor peasants). As a model for revolutionaries to follow it meant nothing but disaster. Perhaps talking to the nuns about the experiences of people fighting injustice and exploitation in other places might open a path to more rational activities for some of them? I mean, every Texan who starts giving a shit about what the rest of the world thinks and does is a victory for sanity over obscurantism and bigotry. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Virus hoaxes and the health of capitalism
Headwood wrote: Congrats, Hugh! You've fallen for two hoaxes in one message (and I'm not even counting the death agony of capitalism. If you don't believe me (and why should you?) check out http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/wobbler-hoax.html and http://www.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/perrin.exe.hoax.html Big deal. Viruses are real, and a friend of mine has just had a real fucker putting her computer (PC of course) out of action for two weeks and thwarting the best efforts of a computer professional neighbour to put it to rights. Lots of us have been screwed by Word macro viruses. If the warning is fake, no harm done -- it might even help by raising alertness. If it's not, then it's worth getting the news out fast. And once more Doug seems to be telling us Capitalism's never been healthier. All that happened was that Dracula got a little fresh blood during the Asian/Russian/Latin American crisis. Or is dear old Basilisk-Eyes, Mr Hardhead Critical Observer telling us that the present speculative bubble is not hot air and bloated credit this time?? Seems to me he's confusing units of capital (ie financial conglomerates, the multinationals) which are surviving and thus expanding -- capital must expand to stay alive -- with capitalism as a social system, a mode of production. But then, he never was a Marxist, so what's new? And disagreeing with someone's perspective and political principles (or lack of them in this case) has got nothing to do with "believing". If Doug makes an empirical claim about a virus, why shouldn't I believe him? I mean, the whole of his bloody book is a chain of empirical claims. Facts, facts, facts! Mr Gradgrind would be very proud of him. Trouble is, it explains fuck all about capitalism, what it's doing and where it's heading. Except to lull us into thinking that it's never been stronger, of course, and that our best political hope is a weaker capitalism with a kinder, gentler regime. Maybe Doug should run for president. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Indian strikes
A useful address for India. Hugh = If you want news on Indian strike which are continuing unabated, go to labourstart.org/india/, where news below from Uttar Pradesh, comes from.The government is putting the navy into the docks. Bill The Hindu. InternationalRegional U.P. starts work on recruitment for power sector LUCKNOW, JAN. 23. The power situation in Uttar Pradesh remained grim with powermen continuing their strike today as the stalemate in talks persisted and the State Government began the process for fresh recruitment. Further talks appeared remote with both the striking employees and the Government sticking to their stands. The Government, which had toughened its stand by dismissing 495 employees, including engineers, and arresting 6,279 powermen, went ahead with the recruitment process in the three newly-carved out power corporations by advertising vacancies of clerks, technicians and labourers. - PTI --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: German politics acquires sleazy tinge
Chris B gets into sleaze. At least he realizes that there's: More than a tinge!! Most of his comments are the usual smashing through wide-open doors, however: For the leading party in the perfect artificially-constructed bourgeois democracy to go through this, shows that in every country bourgeois democracy is inherently vulnerable to capitalist influence. (Yes, yes, I know marxists have long known that already. The point however is that it has to learned by ordinary people from their own experience.) It only shows such a thing if it's pointed out in a coherent political context, this needs a set of alternative social goals at least, and a party promoting them and organizing their realization if it's to get beyond mere criticism. And anyway, anyone who thinks Germany is somehow inherently clean by tradition and Aryan God-fearing genes is living in never-never world. The least little acquaintance with German postwar history requires knowledge of Franz-Josef Strauss, the Bavarian slimeball who could match any Good Old Southern US slimeball phosphorescent streak by phosphorescent streak. And the most minimal acquaintance with Franz-Josef Strauss involves the Lockheed Starfighter. The most sulphurous stink in his career of course, and one that was erupting endlessly around him, was precisely the Lockheed bribery case, where he'd been paid off to get Germany to buy from the Statesfighters that just kept falling out of the sky. Der Spiegel ran an endless campaign on this. (Tonight also the miasmas of sleaze are coiling around New Labour in London, as Geoffrey Robinson, who has done considerable favours for its core trio, Blair, Brown and Mandelson, has been denounced by his former accountant for dubious business methods.) Ah yes, if only these capitalists would use honest open and above-board methods, all would be for the best in the best of all possible worlds, wouldn't it. In Germany the most dramatic implication for the whole process of bourgeois democracy is the suggestion that large quantities of this money were paid by the socialist government of Mitterand to Kohl to help him win the 1994 election for the Christian Democrats! Tut. "The whole process of bourgeois democracy", too. Shame. We'll have to put that right for them as well, then, won't we? No doubt the interests of Franco German unity require Kohl as a "man of honour", not to reveal such a sensationally damaging fact. The Europe of bourgeois democracy, staggering from the revelations of corruption in the Commission, looks tainted for a decade. Tut again. I like that phrase: "The Europe of bourgeois democracy". Yes, what a helpful characterization. No exaggerated arm-waving rant like "The Europe of last-ditch Imperialist consolidation and expansion" or "The Epoch of wars, revolutions and the transition to socialism". Pass the milk, would you vicar? Other features of the ramifying CDU affair are that a major focus of the bribes was to get at the job lot capital of the old German Democratic Republic, in particular the Leuna refinery. Snouts in the trough. At last a straightforward statement I don't object too. Another focus is the sourcing of funds from arms manufacturers for a state that is never supposed by its constitution to go into an aggressive war. Tut again. "Kohl" colloquially in German also means "money", interestingly enough. Not in my dictionaries it doesn't. (Collins big one, and the big one-volume Duden Universalwörterbuch). And I can't recall anyone I know or have known in Germany, and I spent ages in Hamburg last year, ever using it. Kohl means cabbage, by the way, not to be confused with Kohle, which means coal. The left in all western countries should be pushing for much tighter monitoring of the finances of political parties. It is almost an open door. Yes, what an inspiring historical task! But I think we should also be pushing for a political and social agenda that removes capitalists and their lackeys from power in the state and in the economy. And with a lot more force. I mean, if the bourgeois and petty-bourgeois democrats can't work up any campaign steam over this kind of thing, why the hell should we do it for them? The Permanent Revolution makes it obvious that the only way we'll clear up this kind of bourgeois mess nowadays is by NOT leaving it to the bourgeoisie or petty-bourgeoisie, but by pressing for our own solutions which will solve these issues of bourgeois democratic failure in passing. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Indian strikes hotting up
This just came to my notice. Anyone got any info on contacts between dockers and wharfies in other countries and the Indian dockers? Cheers, Hugh * Indian Navy Moves In As 100,000 Dockers Strike Almost 100,000 Indian dock workers began an indefinite strike for more pay on Tuesday, prompting the government to send in the navy to help keep ports running and police to protect officials. http://www.labournet.net/docks2/0001/india2.htm --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Massive strikes in India
This was just posted to Labor-List. Cheers, Hugh Massive strike wave in India To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] LabourStart - http://www.labourstart.org *** Please re-post to other mailing lists, newsgroups, bulletin boards, etc. *** In the last week alone, LabourStart has featured nearly twenty news reports from India as strikes spread across the country. Power workers have plunged one state (Uttar Pradesh) into darkness in their battle against privatization and the response of the government has been to sack workers, arrest union leaders and send in troops. Meanwhile 100,000 port workers have effectively shut down India's shipping and government workers, doctors and others have joined in the strikes. This is a huge setback to the government's plans for "reform" -- meaning compliance with the World Bank/IMF/WTO neo-liberal agenda. Our coverage comes from both mainstream news sources such as BBC and CNN but also from our correspondent in the field, L. V. Subramaniam, a veteran journalist and trade unionist. He has been filing daily reports which give a feel for what is going on. Full coverage of these tremendous developments can be found on our new Indian labour news page -- http://www.labourstart.org/india/ . At the present time, we have received no appeals for help from the Indian unions, and there have been none on the websites of the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions nor on those of the International Trade Secretariats. We expect that there will soon be requests to call upon the Indian government to stop all repression and to release the imprisoned trade unionists. We'll keep you informed on LabourStart and through this mailing list. Eric Lee *** If you are not on the LabourStart mailing list and received this message some other way, you can join the list by sending a message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** Eric Lee Information and Communications Technology Co-ordinator Labour and Society International Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.labourstart.org ICQ: 49624912 PGP: Public key - see http://www.labourstart.org/pgp.shtml Mobile phone: +44 (0) 7703933608 Office phone: +44 (0) 2083491975 --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Insurrection in Ecuador -- first news
I just received the following forward. Obviously more news will emerge as the day continues. Keep your eyes open! Note the websites given! Cheers, Hugh Sent: Sunday, January 16, 2000 4:41 PM Subject: Insurrection Against Neo-Liberalism in Ecuador PGA Action at WTO Seattle - http://members.aol.com/pgacaravan -- please spread widely -- Dear All, I just received this fwd message coming from Ecuador saying that there are currently mass protests going on against the dramatic situation in a country that has suffered neoliberal exploitation and that "the revolution is starting". I was sceptic, so I picked up the phone and phoned an organisation called "Accion Ecologica" whose phone number I had just received recently. I had the chance to speak to someone who is the representative of this organisation at the alternative parliament who is currently debating a strategy for the coming days. He said that the mobilisations have started progressively in the last days already and that several cities are already "taken". He said the large mobilisation for Quito (the capital) is going to be for Monday and Tuesday. He said at least 40.000 indigenas are expected to come into the city, but the mobilisation involve many sectors of society. He said also that international observers are expected to come in the next days and that they hope that from then on the news will be spread internationaly. So far the state controlled media has been promoting non stop lies about how wonderful the neoliberal policies have been in the last years. Nobody believes it anymore. As I asked him if this was a struggle for power, for taking control of the governement, he said no, it's a Poeples Power, there is a Poeples assembly who works in a complicated system of representation [I didn't understand everything in this short phone call]. Infrastructure for communication is being set up, there is a press commission that has been created (comision de prensa) by the Peoples Assembly. I asked him also if they were afraid of repression and he said he hoped the international support would be able to avoid it. We are likely to get more information in the next days and clarification on what kind of "revolution" this is. So stay tuned ! Most of the information is likely to be in Spanish, so if there are people willing to help doing spanish-english translations (or spanish to any other language) please contact me: [EMAIL PROTECTED] and also [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hasta la victoria !! Our resistance is as transnational as capital !! Luciano The following is - a fwd letter sent by Spanish students currently in Ecuador. This is a rough translation I did, feel free to correct the English. - an pasted article from August 99 which gives a good insight into the situation in Ecuador To everyone getting this information: This is a text that was fwd by companher@s from Barcelona which are currently in Ecuador for motives related to their studies and are currently assisting to probably one of the most encouraging news of the millennium. Please distribute this message as wide as you can and organise yourself to find ways of supporting peoples struggle in Ecuador. REVOLUTION BEGINS IN ECUADOR ! Dear companher@s Ecuador is very close to a national revolution y it is currently necessary to do solidarity actions in support of this peoples movement who aims to put an end to neoliberal economic exploitation which has lead to the current crisis. We are some students from UAB (university) in the country y we see the urgent necessity to create a platform of international support in order to prevent a indiscriminate repression of this popular movement. We ask you: 1.- to spread this information through as many ways as possible 2.- that you send us contacts for the spreading of further communiques to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 3.- That people take initiative to coordinate platforms at continental and national level 4.- it is necessary to create a network that will reach mass media and alternative media. It is possible that United States may react with repression in case this popular movement succeeds in his attempt to overthrow the power 5.- We are currently waiting for a document with the strategy that is discussed at the Parlament of Ecuatorian People (a rebel parlament), which will be a document of international strategy addressed to all movements of the world, NGOs etc. We ask you to create the necessary conditions for such a network to function. General Situation in the Country The economic, social and political crisis that Ecuador has been going through in the last years has been worsening dramatically in the last months. As a matter of fact since Jamil Mahuad came into power, the sucre (national currency) has only been losing acquisition power compared to the dollar: the price of the dollar has doubled since 1999 (is it 25000 sucres for a dollar now) For the minority of people, those who have acquisition power and
Re: M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
I wrote: So what do you prepare for -- the thousand automatic adjustments in the bourgeois democratic regime or the decisive moment of political transition when it will be possible to remove bourgeois political institutions and replace them with socialist ones? Chris B replied: Well, I think you have to prepare for both. Now this is either cheap words to cop out of a discussion, or seriously meant. If it's serious, then it means Chris really thinks that the decisive moment of political transition needs to be prepared for. So I have two questions for him. How is he preparing for such a moment of transition in Britain or internationally? How does he think Gramsci prepared for such a moment of transition?` Chris also wrote: ... certain marxists groups specialising only in announcing the revolution, and denouncing everyone else... Examples please. Surely Chris isn't talking about third period Stalinists here? Or perhaps he is -- denunciation was their strongest point. And I would ask what is the point of calling other organisations by definition revisionist? I made my definition of revisionism very clear -- accepting the dictatorship of the proletariat in the Stalinist Soviet Union as an institutional base and support, including its diplomatic extensions the CPs of other countries, but refusing to accept (ie revising) Marx's most fundamental principles regarding the international character of the capitalist mode of production and the need for an international workers party to emancipate the working class by revolutionary means. These fundamentals were, as I said, further developed by Lenin in The State and Revolution and by Trotsky in The Permanent Revolution and put into practice in October. They were subverted (revised) by Stalin with his theories of Socialism in One Country and the Two-Stage Revolution. The Leninist party regime of democratic centralism was subverted by the vicious regime of bureaucratic centralism. Now Chris has consistently refused to reply to my earlier question about the character of Gramsci's revolutionary theory, which he appears to confuse with revolutionary courage, and why it is as orthodox as he appears to be claiming. So first a clear demonstration of Gramsci's orthodox Marxist credentials, please, and then we can move on. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
Chris writes: As far as revolutionary change in the west is concerned Hugh seems to make the mistake of arguing that because Gramsci's approach implies 10,000 changes in the superstructure will be part of the process, it will nevertheless be a gradual evolution. Turbulence and sudden change could occur. It might still be right to fight a war of position, until it turns dialectically into a war of movement. So what do you prepare for -- the thousand automatic adjustments in the bourgeois democratic regime or the decisive moment of political transition when it will be possible to remove bourgeois political institutions and replace them with socialist ones? None of the Soviet-Stalinist CPs *ever* prepared to or even tried despite being unprepared to take over power. Those CPs that did -- in Yugoslavia, Vietnam and China -- had a military and popular base that had forced distance between themselves and Moscow, most dramatically in the case of China, and soon developed features of their own mimicking the bureaucracy and Stalinism of the Soviet Union. Including the refusal to prepare for the take-over of power internationally, again most dramatically in the case of China and its relations with the Indonesian CP leading up to 1965. Gramsci analysed the bourgeois superstructure, or what amounts to the same thing, the Political Regime, the State, as an abstraction lacking a decisive qualitative watershed between bourgeois and workers state power. So his scientific work was passive in the sense that it prepared party members for changes in areas of civil society that are not decisive in relation to socialism. If he'd analysed bourgeois society as Marx, Lenin or Trotsky did, he would have pointed up the contradictions that could explode and create conditions for a revolutionary party leading the working class and its allies among the exploited peasantry and poor people to take power. But this line of discussion won't get any further unless Chris tells us why he thinks Gramsci is not revisionist, and in what way he embodies the fundamental principles of revolutionary Marxism in his work. I've stated my views clearly enough now, and Chris has stated his disagreement. So it's time he justified his disagreement. I'm surprised no-one else is joining in -- is Gramsci dead for the academic world now that it's temporarily impossible to sweep away the glaring contradictions from the class struggle? Are only the regulationists left to smooth the theoretical paths of capitalist accumulation? Will the left cover for the reformists and traitors be restricted to ex-Trotskyists like Cyril Smith from now on? Interesting indication of a strong upsurge in worldwide mass mobilization if the anti-revolutionary ideologues of the workers movement and the petty-bourgeoisie are shifting left this way! Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Gramsci on the State
Hugh, are your really calling Gramsci a revisionist? And if so what type of revisionist is he, and what is your evidence? (I will still allow that you might want to call many self-declared *Gramscians* revisionists, but that is not necessarily the same question.) Chris Burford Yes. Let's call a reformist someone who thinks (wishes, piously-in-the-skyously hopes) that somehow socialism will automatically grow out of capitalism, that is, socialism can be realized within a bourgeois state, without changing the foundations of the state at all. Bernstein is the classic example, followed by Kautsky. Typical for all of these is their increasing distance from Marx's most fundamental scientific principles regarding the nature of society as an expression of material production and reproduction, ie basically a reflection of the mode of production. Today's reformist scum, the modern social-democrats, shudder at Marx's name as much as the bourgeois themselves, if not more so. When Chris lauds Blair, he is lauding a reformist. Let's call a revisionist someone who thinks that somehow socialism will grow automatically out of a non-bourgeois, workers state. Once the bourgeoisie has been expropriated, the rest looks after itself (always providing you exterminate the saboteurs, fascists, Old Bolsheviks, Trotskyists, capitalist roaders, imperialist running dogs and other enemies of the state, except when you make deals with fascists and imperialists like Hitler, Churchill, the Shah, Mobutu or Nixon, for the good of the state). This regardless of the position within the world economy of that workers state. It is obvious that this kind of break with Marx's principles only became possible on the back of October. What is amazing is the consistency with which the same guff repeated itself in all the deformed workers states following on October -- the Eastern European satellites as more or less carbon copies, and with varying degrees of independence but fundamental similarities (Socialism-in-Our-One-Country, the Two-Stage Theory of Revolution, Bureaucratic Centralism, the personality cult) in Yugoslavia, Vietnam, China and Cuba. So revision of Marx's principles is common to both reformists and revisionists, but the main watershed is the principle of the state, where the revisionists accept the necessity (by their institutional dependence on it, as a state or as a dependent party, ie a CP performing the function of diplomatic representation for the Stalinist Soviet Union, Maoist China etc) of a workers state, a dictatorship of the proletariat, but reject the consequences of Marx's and Lenin's analysis of the dialectical relationship between form of state and mode of production (best presented in Lenin's The State and Revolution and Trotsky's Permanent Revolution). It is clear that Gramsci, as bound hand and foot, and willingly, to the Italian, Stalinist CP, falls into this category of revisionism. The elements of reformism in his thought, reminiscent of Kautsky's ultraimperialism turned in on the operations of society, express a compensatory desire to wish away the political defeats of his period (ie Stalinist counter-revolution with all its disasters for the international working class) by means of an essentialist, fatalist, automatic growing over of imperialist society into socialist society. In other words a deliberate ignoring of the political and social contradictions between the bourgeois state (ie the relations of property) and the class struggle (ie the development of the forces of production). As Spinoza would have said: QED. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: From another list on nation
Sorry Charlie, but this is typical say-nothing bollocks from the "other list". Note that Jim B neither reproduces nor summarizes Stalin's theory or definition, nor Lenin's. Regardless of definitions, Lenin worked concretely with the national question many times after 1913-14, and is very clear in relation to the significance of Ireland, Finland and Georgia, for instance. And of course a violent opponent of Stalin's favourite practical line of Great Russian Chauvinism (the line that gave the world the obscene name of Great Patriotic War for the Russian element of World War 2). Also I would rather use the word "pernicious" or "counter-revolutionary" or "catastrophic" about Stalin's "overall theory of nationalism" (including of course the inimitable Socialism in One Country) than just saying it was "not useful". Anybody with access to the article or book got anything substantive to say about them? Cheers, Hugh Ghebremichael: Norm is talking about STALIN's theory of nations, not LENIN's. Lenin probably agreed with Stalin's definition of "nation" in 1913, when Stalin wrote "Marxism and the National Question," but that was before Lenin began seriously to study the dynamics of the colonial world. Lenin never used Stalin's definition thereafter. In fact, Lenin didn't ever define "nation" in any formal sense, and said absolutely nothing about a definition of "nation" after 1913 or 1914. He never even mentioned Stalin's defnition after 1914.I'm sure that Lenin was aware of the fact that you can't define "nation" in such a way as to to include all real nations of all periods, and to exclude non-nations. So don't burden Lenin with Stalin's defnition, or with Stalin's overall theory of nationalism, which was not useful in the period of imperialism. I wrote about this in an article in Monthly Review in 1977, "Are Puerto Ricans a 'National minority'?" and in a book called _The National Question: Decolonizing the Theory of Nationalism_, Zed 1987. Cheers Jim Blaut --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: On which the sun never sets
BBC person of the millennium results: 1. Mahatma Gandhi Black (sort of) subject of British Empire (unwilling, jailed) 2. Leonardo da Vinci 3. Jesus ChristPalestinian leader, not tolerated in Roman Empire 4. Nelson Mandela Black subject of British Empire (unwilling, jailed) 5. Sir Isaac Newtonsubject of British Empire (willing -- Sir Isaac) 6. Albert Einstein German Jew, refugee at pleasure of US Empire 7. Martin Luther King Black, not tolerated in US Empire 8. Sir Winston Churchill subject of the British Empire (willing but pickled) 9. Charles Darwin subject of the British Empire (embarrassing, no Sir Charles) 10. Karl Marx German Jew, refugee at pleasure of British Empire Which leaves Leonardo looking very much the odd man out. Embarrassing bunch of trouble-makers, seems to me. Four out of ten had the pleasure of embarrassing the British Empire (five if Churchill is considered as an embarrassment, which he should be). Two religious leaders (four if you count Gandhi and Mandela). Four political leaders (five if you count King). Four intellectual giants (five counting Leonardo) One artistic giant. Ten sets of balls (let's give Jesus the benefit of the doubt, eh?). Five mainly twentieth century. Two nineteenth century. One seventeenth century. One mainly fifteenth century. One eleventh century (minus ten!) Pity the poor kids who think they might have something to learn by studying the lives of Jesus, Gandhi, King, Churchill or Mandela. What's amazing is the presence of Einstein, Darwin and Marx on the list despite the devout-religious piety of it all. Gandhi the man of the millennium! It is to puke. And such a long film they made of it -- and the seats in the Novi Sad cinema where I saw it with Lil were *hard* (unlike her...). Leonardo at number two worries me a bit -- what on earth has Readers Digest been saying about the man? But perhaps Jesus at no 3 says it all. All the bigots in the world with access to a computer voted for their guy although he was God not human, and although he was the standard marking the start of the first millennium, and the vote was for the second. Still, what's a thousand years between friends? Now here's something to sink your teeth into. Imagine if you will what the fuck of the millennium must have been like... Sweet dreams, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Gramsci on the State
Chris B writes: Gut revulsion at opportunist political leaders seems to combine with a reading of Lenin's polemics against opportunism to create a view that the bourgeois state can never have a progressive aspect, nor can government policies be a terrain of struggle. It is a controversial area, but the following extract from the entry on Gramsci in A Dictionary of Marxist Thought by Anne Showstack Sassoon, (volume ed. by Tom Bottomore. Blackwell, Second Edition 1991) - may clarify the arguments. [snip] * This is a reference to page 263 of "Selections from the Prison Notebooks" 1971, Lawrence and Wishart: "the general notion of the State includes elements which need to be referred back to the notion of civil society (in the sense that one might say that State = political society + civil society, in other words hegemony protected with the armour of coercion). In a doctrine of a State which conceives the latter as tendentially capable of withering away and of being subsumed into regulated society, the argument is a fundamental one. It is possible to imagine the coercive element of the State withering away by degrees, as ever-more conspicuous elements of regulated society (or ethical State or civil society) make their appearance." 1932 This makes things pretty clear, I think. The first sentence talks about "the general notion of the State", that is one valid for any state regardless of the class character of the ruling class that organizes it to protect its interests in the mode of production involved. The second sentence goes on to refer to "a doctrine of a State which conceives the latter as tendentially capable of withering away", as if the withering away was part of the earlier "general notion of the State". Given Gramsci's reputation as a Marxist, it might be thought that he was referring to Marx's notion of the State. But Marx made it very clear that in his view the State would only be able to wither away once the conflicting interests of the classes in the capitalist mode of production (ie the bourgeoisie and the proletariat) had been resolved by a revolution in the mode of production so that these classes are removed from the battlefield of history and replaced by a society of freely associated producers, neither wage-slaves nor capitalists but equal in law and in practice in their access to the forces of production and in the sharing of the wealth they produce. As long as society is riven by class struggle, that is as long as capital and labour-power confront each other as polar opposites, ie as long as they exist as capital and labour-power/wage-labour, there is no way the State can wither away. It's obvious from the remark quoted that Gramsci ignores this and is completely reformist in his general perspective. Which of course is why he's such a favourite with academic liberals who like to coquette with a dash of Marxist red in their dinner jacket lapels. To sum up, first a *workers* State, then eventually, with the consolidation of socialism and the construction of communism, a withering away. Before that, no withering away, and in the transitional period while workers revolutions create workers states but don't gain control of the world economy, the need for a dictatorship of the proletariat, ie a very strong state to defend the gains of the workers against imperialist invasions and other hostile pressures. The class character of the state is therefore all-important for Marxists (but obviously not for Gramsci and his followers). And the State should not be confused with the regime, either -- as the State Capitalists do, confusing a workers state under a counter-revolutionary, bureaucratic regime (Stalinism) with a theoretically impossible chimaera such as a bureaucratic state etc. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Millennial greetings
Chris B writes: But I agree with Hugh, (even though I suspect he may wish to leave me out of the greetings to revolutionaries) that sometime in the next millenium, and probably within the next century, we should be celebrating a socialist thanksgiving, with turkey the main item on the menu. The day you feel the force, you won't have to ask anyone else... Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: HAPPY SOCIALIST MILLENNIUM!
Hugh declares: HAPPY NEW MILLENNIUM TO ALL REVOLUTIONARIES WORKING TO MAKE THIS THE BIG ONE! The above is a lot of sentimental claptrap. What does happy mean --mammy tuck me in at night; god look after me. Warm regards George Pennefather Be free to check out our Communist Think-Tank web site at http://homepage.eircom.net/~beprepared/ The greeting, George, was to all *revolutionaries*. With warmth and heart. Happy is as happy does. The word is solidarity. We "tuck each other in at night", so to speak, and we "look after" each other. George is the one bringing in mothers and gods. For Marx, happiness was *fighting*. And powerful, free-flowing emotions, not that many of our sneerers would know this, are not sentimental claptrap. Freeing the bodies and emotions of working men and women has been one of the great conquests of this past century -- Hollywood (god help us), rock and roll and the Pill. None of the elitist fakers have been able to stop it. If you feel your body and your sexuality is under your own control, no one's going to be able to stomp on you, except by sheer force. The most powerful force for destruction on the other hand is the unconscious motives of those who feel they control neither. In tandem of course with the destructive mechanisms of capitalist reproduction and accumulation which give all this cruelty and vengeance free rein. If anyone's shaking their head at this, they could do worse than (re)read Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism. Cheers, Hugh PS Note the way the big historical picture -- the millennial domination of capitalism shifting to the domination of socialism (implicit of course is if we can steer clear of barbarism) swept over the still waters of the think-tank without even ruffling the surface. PPS A special request for Rob -- please take a cold one, go sit on the paddock fence, and drink the health of all those as yet undecided -- may they come down to firm ground one way or the other! --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: CLARIFY THE HISTORY OF CLASS STRUGGLE IN FINLAND!
Many thanks to Jari-Pekka for his clarifications. And for the knowledge that there are some Trotksyists in Finland -- rare birds indeed. Maoists (at the time) I knew, but I only met one Trotskyist there, who moved to Sweden and was active in the USec. Pekka Haapakoski, who wrote about the vigorous Brezhnevite youth left (seventies, I had some friends among them) for New Left Review. I'm looking forward to those articles -- I'd be delighted to see them as early as possible (I read Finnish) so if Jari-Pekka is willing to mail me them I'd be really grateful. When my head is clearer, I'm looking forward to continuing this discussion on the choices facing the Finnish workers movement after 1917. What I know from personal tales I've heard is that ordinary Finnish workers were sent to the Lapland front (for instance) in the Second World War and found themselves (in both instalments of the war -- the Winter War and the War of Continuation -- facing Red Army guns from ahead and White officer guns from behind. Not to mention the biting cold. Interesting too is the progressive nationalism of the Finnish workers movement in contrast to the split character of the bourgeoisie, with a reactionary nationalism on the one hand and class internationalism on the other -- they called in Swedish and German reactionaries without a qualm to slaughter their "national" brothers, wanted to make a German imperial family member King over Finland and got as their most famous early president an ex-Tsarist officer who spoke better Swedish and Russian than he did Finnish (Mannerheim -- the one on a horse near the Helsinki Post Office and the new art gallery). Anyone wanting to get the emotional feel of probably most Finns in relation to the Second World War would do well to read Unknown Soldier, the novel by Vaino Linna. He wrote a big trilogy covering the civil war up to and after the Second World War too. Cheers, Hugh As there isn't any Bolshevik-Leninist to vote so we have to vote for what we have. Of course we don't support Manner as a Stalinist but because his work for example in the Finnish workers revolution. Also we want to show that Communism/Marxism didn't die with Stalinism. OK, so explain this "of course" to us. Why is it a matter of course that you don't support Manner as a Stalinist? We have strong political differences between Stalinists as we support Trotsky. What difference does it make to your characterization of his historical role? Unfortunatly I don't know so much about Manner that I could exactly judge his role. Also when we criticize Manner as a Stalinist we must understand that the situation in Finland was hard for Communists and most of CP leadership had to work in other countries and this meant especially in Soviet Union. So it wasn't easy for Finnish Communists to beging support Trotsky or any anti-Stalinist tendency. I don't know if there was any Bolshevik-Leninist group or even individual in Finland before World War II, at least I don't know any. How does it affect your view on Otto-Ville Kuusinen, for instance, or the role of the Stalinists in World War II? From the base what I know about O-V Kuusinen I think that he was a real arselicker of Stalin and supported many of his views from the begining. I'm writing article about Finnish Winter War and People's goverment of Terijoki where I will handle this question about role of Stalinists. There I will also look how right/wrong Trotsky was in his writings about Finland in In defence of Marxism. On the positive side, explain briefly for an international audience the significance of the Finnish Revolution and the role of the working class in it, along with the landless rural workers. I'm working with article about Finnish Workers Revolution which should explain this things. However it maybe take awhile to finish it as I go to army in monday (3. January). It's good that you think Communism/Marxism is still alive after the fall of Stalinism, and that you characterize something important here as "Stalinism" -- but what exactly is it that you consider to have died with "Stalinism"? What died was e.g. counter revolutionary theory about "socialism in one country" which led to bureaucratic degeneration of Soviet Union. And do you think that Marxism somehow was *alive* "with Stalinism"? I think that there was hardly anything Marxist in Stalinism but that some "Trotskyist" groups still adhered it. These things need clarity if we're going to get all real Marxists and revolutionaries together to throw out imperialism and create workers states. I agree and I make my best to clarify them. In Finland situation is a little different. For example I'm a member of the Finnish Communist Party and even a vice-chairman of our section. Early of last year as we had a general elections I was also editor of our local election paper. Comradely; Jari-Pekka Raitamaa, MO-IWC
M-TH: Re: the fascist stuff and a HAPPY NEW YEAR
In message 001e01bf529a$768c2340$8af3143e@malecki, Bob Malecki [EMAIL PROTECTED] writes On Wed, 29 Dec 1999 20:41:20 -, "Geoff Collier" [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Now you have more time can you update us on your local fascist problem ? Geoff Sure! Um in the last ten years or so the fascists here in Sweden have become quite a small but formidable force through white power music, demonstrations and quite open provacations including most recently the cold blooded murder of a synidacalist trade union leader at his home. Among other things. No mention here of the disco arson attack that you were telling us about before, Bob. Are you still attributing that to the Nazis? -- Jim heartfield The still ongoing investigation has established a likelihood of arson, but hasn't made public any suspects yet. Given the inflammable nature of the issue, this isn't very surprising. I'm not sure it's Nazis. If it was, the police (with typical Swedish expediency) might well have used the public pressure to smoke out the criminals and score some easy points. But we'll see. What's beyond any doubt is the way the community responded and the great solidarity shown by the kids and their parents in the way they handled the grief and mourning. It would be a very stupid Nazi indeed who tried to victimize anyone in that part of Gothenburg. As you all saw in Bob's report, the town kids' main slogan was "Nazi scum -- Fuck off!" And that's in an area where the bastards had been gathering support. A working-class culture thrown into unemployment and risking becoming lumpen and falling for reactionary racist scapegoating solutions. But the traditions were obviously stronger than the Nazis or the Social-Democrat leadership reckoned with. You can imagine what the Gothenburg kids would do after what they've been through together. I hope all the sneerers (good old Headwood can stand as the chief example) reflect for a second on the obvious resonance between Bob's presence, proposals and actions and the youth of Robertsfors. I can just imagine the sneerers swanning around not knowing what was going on or where to start in such a situation. For my New Year's Toast -- Cheers to the young in heart!!! Here's to the kids! HAPPY NEW YEAR AND THE VERY BEST TO MOST OF YOU, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: CLARIFY THE HISTORY OF CLASS STRUGGLE IN FINLAND!
A vote for the Stalinists in Finland is hardly in support of class struggle historically or today. Warm Regards Bob Malecki As there isn't any Bolshevik-Leninist to vote so we have to vote for what we have. Of course we don't support Manner as a Stalinist but because his work for example in the Finnish workers revolution. Also we want to show that Communism/Marxism didn't die with Stalinism. OK, so explain this "of course" to us. Why is it a matter of course that you don't support Manner as a Stalinist? What difference does it make to your characterization of his historical role? How does it affect your view on Otto-Ville Kuusinen, for instance, or the role of the Stalinists in World War II? On the positive side, explain briefly for an international audience the significance of the Finnish Revolution and the role of the working class in it, along with the landless rural workers. It's good that you think Communism/Marxism is still alive after the fall of Stalinism, and that you characterize something important here as "Stalinism" -- but what exactly is it that you consider to have died with "Stalinism"? And do you think that Marxism somehow was *alive* "with Stalinism"? These things need clarity if we're going to get all real Marxists and revolutionaries together to throw out imperialism and create workers states. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Nation
Charlie's right in his reply to George, but of course he should have mentioned the best Marxist treatment of this problem so far, that is Trotsky's work on the Permanent Revolution. Based on the work of Marx, Engels and Lenin, and quoting copiously from them, Trotsky shows how the progress of capitalism has made the bourgeoisie into a completely non-revolutionary force, even in oppressed and exploited countries where the bourgeois revolution has still not yet been carried through. But, as Charles makes clear, the problems involved in the lack of a bourgeois revolution are material and by no means merely ideological. And the fact that the bourgeoisie is incapable of leading a bourgeois revolution (these days, post-Nicaragua and the Sandinistas, we'd have to add the petty-bourgeoisie, too, as against what happened in Cuba with the Castroite guerrilla leadership while the Soviet workers state still existed as a bridgehead of the proletariat in the worldwide class struggle) -- the fact that the bourgeoisie is incapable of leading a bourgeois revolution does NOT mean that these basic democratic demands no longer need to be met. They do, as we can see every day in the struggles of oppressed nationalities for basic democratic rights, such as political independence, national self-determination, an end to slavery (South Africa until a few years ago, for instance) etc. However, the great watershed in the revolutionary movement is to be found between the stage theorists, on the one hand, such as the Stalinists with their theory of Socialism in One Country (ie socialism can be achieved on a purely nationalist basis, regardless of the condition of the world market), Two Stage Revolution (almost pure in Mandela/ANC/SACP South Africa: "first we carry out the bourgeois revolution, ending "feudalism", slavery, apartheid (or whatever the superexploitation of the country concerned might be in each individual case), and only then, when the democratic bourgeois republic has let the working class develop its forces and the requisite level of political culture, will we consider the socialist revolution. This is of course objectively counter-revolutionary. The way Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky saw it, and this was proved in practice by October, was that it had become the task of the working class to lead the popular (non-proletarian) masses in the fight for democratic rights AT THE SAME TIME and NECESSARILY leading the working class for the seizure of state power, because only the accession of the working class to power would provide the social guarantee needed to consolidate and develop the newly-won rights. Any retaking of power by the bourgeoisie would lead to an immediate loss of rights or their complete emasculation. When the Finnish bourgeoisie won the civil war in 1918, for instance, their first reaction was to look to Germany for a King!! Only the German revolution and the dumping of the Kaiser stopped that particular piece of historical lunacy. All this means that the "global" approach to revolution, which claims that there are no just national struggles any more, it's all class struggle and nothing else (eg among Trots, the Sparts and the CWI-Militant) which renders such positions on Ireland, say, completely useless, fails to see the dialectic of combined national/popular struggle for democratic rights and workers struggle for a socialist state. The Bolshevik mass slogans for October were Bread, Peace, Land -- giving leadership in the mass popular struggle. This combined with the socialist slogan of power -- All Power to the Soviets -- brought sufficient force to bear on the Tsarist reactionaries, the bourgeois counter-revolutionaries and their petty-bourgeois and labour-aristocrats running dogs that a workers state was set up and was able to survive the most murderous counter-revolutionary invasions and internal chaos. What Stalinism did to this after 1924 is another story, but the need to understand the Permanent Revolution to understand both national struggles and revolution worldwide is absolutely clear. For the best examples of the theory of the Permanent Revolution applied to history as it happens, read Trotsky on the Chinese Revolution in the late twenties and on the Spanish Revolution throughout the thirties. Particularly in the latter case in relation to Catalan nationalism and potential problems of Balkanization. Today the focus of course is on Kosova, East Timor and Chechnya, where the combination of national aspirations and socialist working-class leadership is conspicuously absent, and the results are accordingly appalling -- for even if self-determination is achieved, which is a good thing, the class leadership of the newly independent state will make all the difference as to whether the new state is economically viable and really independent. Cheers, Hugh == In feudalism, there were manors, which were self-sufficient economic units. With the rise of
M-TH: Re: South Africa
Perhaps some people have views about the settlement to end the apartheid regime in South Africa bringing the ANC to power. My opinion is that the white regime agreed to a settlement because of the weakness of the mass movement in South Africa as led by the ANC and the trade unions. Please specify the weakness you see. And explain why you don't mention the SACP as a source of weak leadership. And what about the international connections? Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Marx/Engels Internet Archive
Good news! After Chris B's note about the Marx/Engels Internet Archive not having a search engine I checked it out and wrote to the Archive to ask about it. This is their reply. Cheers, Hugh ___ Greetings, and thank you for your inquiry. We're in the process of moving the marxists.org site to a new server that will support a search engine. We hope to complete this move within the week. In the meanwhile our UK mirror has a search capability: http://www.marxists.org.uk/search.shtml This mirror is perfectly up-to-date. This has no search engine, and lacks much of the other supportive material, and I suspect, texts of the earlier site. On the contrary, the marxists.org site has vastly more content than the original marx.org site, which was pulled by its administrator many months ago. We mirror all of its original content and much more besides. Please clarify this point to your comrades. It's a painful misperception. If you have further questions please don't hesitate to contact me. Best, Tim Delaney Director, Marx/Engels Internet Archive http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/ mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Ali BBC sportsperson of the century
Chris B writes: Like Hugh, (who essentially agrees with me apart from having to take a customary swipe at reformism) I also remember the black power salute at the Olympics. That took courage. I don't essentially agree with Chris. I essentially disagree with him precisely because of the reformist slant he puts on things like this. My constant criticism of reformism, Social-Democracy, the Third Way (now being dumped for the usual opportunist reasons by one of its figureheads Gerhard Schroeder the German chancellor), etc, is a principled stand against a position that will solve nothing in a real long-term sense for the working class. Concessions are fine, but they're temporary and can be clawed back, they're a barometer of class relations, little more. And the bosses rarely end up paying for anything of this themselves. If the workers in rich imperialist countries don't get skinned for every penny, the workers in poor semi-colonial dependent countries will. What I will agree on is the importance and courage of the Mexico City black power salute. Not its significance, however. Why not? Because the rest of Chris B's argument: When you see a hall of mainly white men standing up and applauding three black men, shall we say it is better that it happens than it does not. It is a liberation for the white people, quite apart from more obvious benefits. It is worth a hundred lectures against racism and a thousand lectures in praise of proletarian internationalism. It is iteself a concrete act of proletarian internationalism. If we abolish boxing, let us do it together, but meanwhile let us respect skill, courage, and dignity in the face of great difficulty. That is the real revolutionary significance. creates a complete confusion. The significance of these things is neither proletarian nor revolutionary in a Marxist sense. It's plebeian and democratic and rebellious in a limited sense (against blue-rinse Lincoln-driving country-clubbing Republican zombies), and the democratic aspect, as usual in cases like this, is completely castrated. A vote is held, but the institution it's channelled by is rigged in advance. As John said, if voting could change society, it'd be banned. Two British sports reflections on sportsmen who changed the conditions of their colleagues more than anyone else this century: 1) John Charles, the Welsh footballer who turned his back on the ten-quid-a-week slavery that even Stanley Matthews was condemned to back in the fifties in Britain, and carved out a rich professional career for himself in Italy. From a galley-slave chauvinist gladiator to an international "free" entrepreneur. 2) Freddie Trueman, who single-handedly blasted the plebeian professional cricketer into a position of (rather more) power and a lot more respect in British cricket. His special award should also be shared by the crowds in the West Indies and Oz, whose barracking liveliness galvanized the atmosphere of the game. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Debt relief
Does anybody have any view on the West's apparent attempts to extinguish much of the third world debt? Yes, it's exactly that -- "apparent". It's like a slave-driver on a Roman galley giving the rowers a day without the whip, so they won't die on him. Sometimes the regime is "humane", like this, and when sailors were given limes or pomegranates to keep them in working nick, and sometimes not, when there are so many slaves that it didn't matter one way or the other -- the Africans being transported to the slave colonies, the poor sods digging the Panama Canal, etc. And there's always some kind of alternation going on between bloodthirsty repression and concessions to the masses. Except, interestingly enough, under Stalinism, where, say, Chrushchovite or Gorbachovite concessions hardly got started before they ended up in the Hungarian revolution on the one hand and capitalist restoration (for lack of revolutionary working class leadership) on the other. So a workers state with a bureaucratic regime will tolerate concessions to capital (see China and Cuba) but not concessions to the interests of the working masses. But note that these interests are materially served by the workers state as such, as long as it survives. The citizen's place in the production set up is guaranteed by the constitution, any unemployment or banishment from production is a brutal violation of the foundations of the state, requiring a huge oppressive apparatus to perpetuate. The kind of "concessions" in question here are not the material ones of capitalism (not in the same way, anyhow) but the political ones of organization and socialist democracy. As for the debt, it's not the actual absolute figures that matter, but the relation of indebtedness and dependency. There's no attempt at all on the part of the West to do anything in the slightest about this, the root cause of the "debt problem". The only answer is to do it the Latin American revolutionary way (ie not Castro's or Lula's or the Sao Paulo forum's way) and demand the Non-Payment of the Foreign Debt -- and the Domestic Debt too while you're at it. And this of course demands the full support of those of us in imperialist countries. We're defeatist about the solvency and prosperity of "our" financial institutions and companies. They have no solutions. We do. And our solutions involve their abolition. Poof, gone! Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Show us yer spit...
I asked: Now if any of you cleverclogs's can show me a single quote in which Engels or Lenin or Trotsky claim that dialectical materialism is a finished body of philosophical doctrine, or that their own contributions to its first steps are more than just that, then we might have a discussion. And Russ quotes Engels: 'the science of the general laws of motion, both of the external world and of human thought - two sets of laws which are identical in their substance but differ in their expression.' Engels _Essay on Feuerbach_ and asks: Can there be unfinished laws? The question should be: "Can there be unfinished science?" What about the laws of quantum mechanics? Obviously Engels is talking about a science investigating these laws of motion, the existence of which he assumes hypothetically. If we can't find anything better, we can use them axiomatically, always in the knowledge that they are still in the process of being studied and might therefore be replaced by better formulated and more generally valid axioms. Russ of course with his objections to Engels immediately throws Newton and his laws of motion oot the windae, but that's obviously a small price to pay for having a snicker at Engels and trying to erect an ugly great concrete wall of derision and division right through the middle of the most productive intellectual and practical partnership humanity has ever produced. If Russ is concerned about the ill-effects of the Stalinist version of dialectical materialism -- which was a travesty -- then he should reflect that for a Marxist being precedes thought and the Stalinist version of dm arose from concrete social conditions in the new Soviet Union, not vice versa. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: wouldabeen nice to talk about, eh?
Rob whinges: Whilst I obviously tend to Simon's general point of view (although I'm closer to Hugh on the finance/'productive capital' question) - and I do find it strange to be considered 'pb' when we own nothing, 'parasites' when we ask nothing, 'offering blueprints' when that is precisely what we know we can not do, 'exploiting defeat' when it is all we hold dear that is being defeated, and 'patronising' for believing in the potency of democratic activism - I'd've thought we had better things to talk about. Like the democratic activism going on in and regarding Seattle. That consumate poll-watching politician par excellence, Clinton, is actually opting to walk the thin high wire on this one - and the attempts to ridicule the protesters are waning because this is too big, right across the spectrum - and that little distinction between what is human and what is market is pressing itself on people's attention around the world - and third-worlders are feeling sufficiently cocky to talk about power gaps in globalist paradise - and people are asking loudly how does the socio-economic system we have address the gaps it immanently produces - and our suits are coming to learn no-one is swallowing their tripe any more - and unionists, students, anarchists, greenies and Marxists are getting used to the feel of each others' shoulders again - and they're learning that the great democracy's answer to popular expression comes from the barrels of guns - but they're also tasting popular potency for the first time in a generation. All this in the belly of the beast, too! Geez, that wouldabeen nice to talk about, eh? Obviously not. What Rob is describing in Seattle is what Bob M and me have been describing in Sweden, and what me and Bob and Dave have been going on about for years now. It's called an upsurge, and we have been very explicit about it as being an expression of a worldwide tendency (mind you Dave thought it was all a bit exceptional in a "reactionary" period, but that was then, maybe), perhaps clearest in relation to Albania, the Congo and the Oz wharfies' struggle. So who's not talking about what? I'll be putting up Marx's views on Free Trade and Protectionism from 1847 soon, again, for the umpteenth time, too, so we can all see that Free Trade and Protectionism are not at all where it's at for the working class -- they're purely bourgeois concerns and always have been. We have other fish to fry. And I think it's weird that Rob "generally" agrees with Simon on unspecified issues, while he agrees (tends to agree) with me on the fundamental scientific issue of the character of the bourgeoisie and its relation to the productive forces of society at the present time, surely one of the most important matters in the class struggle -- like, know your enemy... I mean, it does sound as if Rob regards the imperialist bourgeoisie as his enemy too, doesn't it? Perhaps we should ask Rob to give us his definition of an enemy, him being a sociologist and all, after a cold one on the porch of an evening has subdued the fevered heat of yet another Oz summer's day... As for the belly of the beast, consider this: imperialism as a beast has contained vast and increasingly agitated amounts of gases (popular frustration, resentment, protest and not infrequently rebellion) over the past twenty-five years or more (let's say Nixon and Kissinger gave the starting signal, and Reagan and Thatcher carried the ball for them). Its repressive policies and austerity policies and strangulation-of-the-poor-and-working-masses-at-home-and-abroad policies have so compressed these internal gases that it is more like a pressure-cooker or a power-station boiler now than any common-or-garden dragon. When I mentioned the other day that Sweden is seething, this was in the actual pressure cooker. Little bubbles under great pressure. Now most of us know what happens if you suddenly release the pressure under such conditions -- you get a bloody great explosion and learn just what insupportable pressure there was in the containing vessel. And given that this is the belly of the Great Satan, just imagine the stink... Looks like some strong indications of an imminent release of pressure are happening in Seattle. And, against the Jeremiahs who have been preaching tranquillity and total imperialist control for ever and ever (Henwood shall be nameless, as he is by no means alone in this, he's had the whole bloody chorus of ex-Marxists and ex-revolutionaries and petty-bourgeois Doubting Thomas's doo-wah-ing along behind him), it's obvious that there's a whole broad spectrum of angry masses involved. Imperialism is being deserted by its one remaining mass popular political base, the intermediate strata of bureaucrats, educated jobsworths and petty-bourgeois at home in the once-privileged heartlands. Watch for superstructural contortions as the likes of Clinton and Blur try to create the appearance of offering concessions to these enraged masses
M-TH: Re: wouldabeen nice to talk about, eh?
RIP from the tomb intones: Wouldn't it be nice if Hugh were right? (It *is*, Russ...) It's called an upsurge In your dreams. No cauldron about to explode- this is just a tempest in a teapot- the last fart of hippydom whinging about selected contradictions of capital and hoping that street theatre and letters to Clinton are going to change the world. The full measure of their real impotence... Thousands of do-gooders and bleeding hearts, along with hundreds of left militants, stopped some of the world's most influential ruling class representatives from meeting for a whole day and made them wish they were somewhere else. Impotence is when you can't get it up. RIP seems to think impotence is not being able to conceive, gestate, give birth, raise and marry off progeny all in one blink of an eye. Make no mistake about it, the folks in Seattle were raring to go, even if there were more Gapons than Bolsheviks around. This ranks with the Daley Chicago Democratic convention of 1968 with police "Gestapo tactics in the street". Only there's no hot war going on at the moment, just slow torture of uncooperative states like Iraq, Cuba, North Korea and Serbia and the incessant frenzied flogging of dead and almost dead horses (Africa and Latin America). Just for a second, imagine what would happen if some protestors were shot and killed. Or if solidarity demos in other places were shot on and people were killed (Kent State). This isn't isolated, either. Remember the Columbia "town hall meeting" in Ohio where Albright and her henchmen were driven to put off the bombing of Iraq for months. And the protests now against the WTO are much broader. And remember it was good old bleeding heart Father Gapon leading the innocent but enraged masses on a peaceful protest march to implore the Little Father to see reason (constitutional rights and better working conditions) that triggered off the 1905 revolution in Russia. The dear priest was, as it happens, also a Tsarist spy, for which he was fittingly rewarded by some of the workers he'd been spying on. So the best-laid plans of Tsarist rats for moderate reforms within the Law can lead to the most unimaginable (to some at least) consequences. When RIP van Winkle wakes up from his connubial slumbers, we'll let him know what's been happening. However, if he can keep his eyes open during "events", he may find himself able to half-inch a 4WD from some factory that temporarily finds itself out of the iron grip of bourgeois legality. After all, it's an ill wind blows nobody good... Cheers, Hugh PS I can just hear him whistling Johnson's Motor Car to himself as he flies over the Midlands lanes in his trophy... -- Will ya still need me, will ya still feed me, When I'm sixty-eight... --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: China and LOV
Simon makes some points: Workers like these two toiled for a pittance for decades, with the lifetime promise of a communist state's "iron rice bowl." Now, caught between two economic eras, they feel betrayed. Capitalism tells us all that we will be well off if we work hard. China, as elsewhere. Then, as now. Wrong. The "iron rice bowl" was no promise, it was a reality. As was cheap accommodation. A pittance the wages might have been, but they didn't have to stretch to cover exorbitant prices for the most basic necessities. And agricultural workers won't thrown off the land, and factory workers weren't thrown on to the streets. The sense of betrayal is not at an unfulfilled promise, but at a system of permanent security that was destroyed with the move away from a workers state with planning to a capitalist state where the LOV has free play (including the tender mercies of the multinationals and monopolies that this gives rise to). China has only begun to create Western-style unemployment, welfare, pension and health insurance systems -- all vital to smoothing the transition from the old government-run economy to a modern market one. Because when the state ran industry it was not necessary to have a separate state welfare scheme. Simon seems to assume that state control automatically implies universal welfare schemes. I'd like to see some arguments for this assumption. In the past, state enterprises had lifelong obligations to their workers, including living allowances and medical care for those laid off. Just as the state has in the West. A very sweeping statement that begs too many questions. Particularly historical-political ones relating to the origin and purpose of the various state-run enterprises in question in different economies. Seems to me that the state as such is responsive to the contradictory pressures in society in the west, and the availability or not of benefits of various kinds is directly related to the balance of class forces in the society in question. If the bourgeoisie has the upper hand, the benefits are cut (regardless of the ostensible slant of the government of the day). Now in workers states, the pressures were not so much from internal contradictions as from the interaction between the counter-revolutionary bureaucratic regime (which of course *is* a kind of internal contradiction, but not a class one, rather a *caste* one) and world imperialism. This is shown by the permanence of the benefits until the decisive breakdown of the bureaucracy in the face of the untenable pressures on them from the workers at home and the imperialists in the world market. Once the bureaucracy chooses to capitulate to the imperialist bourgeoisie rather than hand over their power and privileges to the democratic control of the associated producers, the floodgates are opened and the "welfare" mechanisms of the workers states unravel at a hair-raising pace. The instant qualitative aspect of this demonstrates clearly enough that a qualitative change is taking place -- from a workers state to a bourgeois state, from a state that keeps the LOV at bay, to one that doesn't. In the west there is no such instant and dramatic transformation, there is the slow grind of class war in the usual win-a-few lose-a-few process. Unless of course a change of regime from bourgeois democratic reaction to bourgeois Bonapartism (military dictatorship) makes it possible to attempt to suppress the rights of the organized working class at one fell swoop. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: US lies about Chinese embassy bombing
This piece I'm forwarding below from today's Observer, which persuasively argues that the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade was deliberate, demonstrates: a) the risks the most powerful capitalist nation on earth is prepared to take to get its way; b) the lies it (and its lapdog English accomplices) are prepared to spread to cover up the reality of the action; c) the lack of international coordination (ie trust and harmony) within NATO and other imperialist alliances, not just at diplomatic level but even within the command structure of military operations; d) the fact that the Chinese were quite right to treat the action as a deliberate act of war, and that in retrospect their reaction was exceedingly mild (fairly reflecting the contradictory position and interests of the Chinese bureaucracy in a workers state well on its way to capitalist restoration). In sum, that for imperialist policy the end justifies the means, and the means include acts of war without declaration of war and barefaced lies about such deliberate acts of policy, not only to the public but also to ostensible allies at all levels. This should remind us yet again that this kind of action and cover-up has been deployed constantly by the imperialists and is still being deployed by them and will be deployed by them as long as they are in a position to do so, not just against "military" targets but against social targets (where the bloody Indonesian counter-revolution of the 1960s is just one example) and against labour targets (where busting unions and workers' organizations, for instance in Central America, or McCarthyism in the US are massive examples). The extent of such actions is purely dictated by expediency. The costs (in terms of credibility, legitimacy, political risk etc) are weighed against the benefits (in terms of weakening the enemy). Sometimes it's done as pinprick work, taking out individuals or small groups, sometimes it's massive, but it's always there and should never be forgotten. TV, the movies and popular culture keep reminding us, day after day, untiringly, but of course in their distorting mirror the end justifying the means is always good. It's "us" against "them", and the "us" (in fact the "US") is always good (well, almost always -- occasionally flashes of scepticism are put in to reflect the huge and growing crisis of legitimacy that has been racking imperialist governance for decades now). And where labour is concerned, we should remember the (obviously denied) influence this kind of policy imperative has on the leaderships of imperialist (ie US, British, French, German, etc) labour organizations that are in the mainstream, whether national or international, trade union or political, reactionary or ostensibly progressive. But we should also remember that part of the expediency that dictates the extent of dirty work that actually gets carried out, and a big part, is the balance of social forces. The mainly unacknowledged social power of the organized working class puts pressure on imperialist policy-makers to exercise extreme care in the dirty tricks they choose to set in action. Exposure entails definite risks of removal from office and privilege, and less clearcut risks of shame and humiliation. Although the history of Nixon should at the same time keep us clear on the extent to which the system looks after its own. Clinton was effusive at the "great man's" funeral after all about how much he had learnt from him, and the send-off was a national event. If it had been the funeral of a pariah, it would have been more like Mozart's, the anonymous dumping of a "nobody" in a hole in the ground. Cheers, Hugh The Chinese embassy bombing Truth behind America's raid on Belgrade The US claimed it was a tragic blunder. But the pinpoint accuracy of the attack was in fact a deadly signal to Milosevic: seek outside help in Kosovo at your peril Sunday November 28, 1999 The Observer On May 7 this year the B2 - at $44 billion the world's most expensive plane - took off from Whiteman air force base in Missouri, its sleek black belly loaded with missiles, destined for Belgrade. It flew high across the Atlantic and Western Europe before opening its bomb doors over the Adriatic and releasing the most accurate air-drop munitions in the world - the JDAM flying bomb. The JDAM uses four adjustable fins to control its position, continually checked and re-checked by fixes from seven satellites. It is so precise a weapon it is accurate to a range of less than two metres. The bombs carried on that B2 rained down over the Serb capital and rocketed towards their target - the southern end of the Chinese Embassy - demolishing the office of the military attache and killing three `journalists'. But the midnight strike was so precise the embassy's north end was untouched, leaving the marble and glass of the front entrance and the ambassador's Mercedes and four flower pots
Re: M-TH: Re: Meszaros article: Communism Is No Utopia
Dear Rob, Where I am with Simon is the sensibility that we're not at the planning stage until lots'n'lots of people are engaged. And then they'll be part of the planning, too, eh? I've never worn that 'saviours waving the programme at the masses' stuff. Don't reckon it gets you to democratic socialism, you see. Also don't reckon it'd be as useful an agitational banner as it once was, either. But that's me. Cheers for the support. Glad to know someone else here gets the point that precisely when revolution IS on the agenda the vanguard isn't... Simon Wise up, Rob and Simon, and read Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, John Reed's Ten Days that Shook the World and any decent history of 1917. You'll enjoy the yarn, and to your amazement you'll discover that "lots'n'lots of people" were engaged in the bodies of dual power -- the Soviets, and in actions throughout the cities and the whole nation. The Bolsheviks and the other currents competing for leadership (remember Trotsky's current was not fused with the Bolsheviks officially till the summer) were NOT "saviours waving the programme at the masses", unless they were intent on swanning off into the sunset out of the arena of history and policy-making. In fact the reactionaries including of course Kerensky and the Provo government were the ones doing the abstract saviour waving the programme and the flag stuff -- until they got pissed off at the lack of respect shown by the masses and sent in the same old troops as the Tsar had used to bludgeon the workers and the peasants. The agitational banner of the Bolsheviks was Bread! Peace! Land! -- as both of you choose to forget for the sake of the old anarchist, syndicalist, state-cap, Pure Socialist, no transition, no reality arguments about formal democracy in the midst of a raging class war (petty-bourgeois failure to see the wood for the matchsticks). For chrissakes look around you at the insane greed and incompetence of the imperialist governors of the world! Talk about democracy! Blair trying to force Ken Livingstone to swear to every jot and tittle of a local election manifesto before it had even been written -- and everyone knows that rigidly regimented official candidates don't hold such documents worth a pulled hen, even if they write them themselves. Yet you duck out of the battle to get things where they should be from the mess in which they actually are by nitpicking at those who are slogging it out on the field and getting covered in mud in the process. Get stuck in and help steer the battle-waggons in the right direction, if you know so much about cause and effect and undemocratic degeneration! Stop the rot. Don't just be "saviours waving a programme" of Purity and Light at the rest of us! As for the vanguard not being on the agenda when revolution is, that's nothing but phrasemaking of the most superficial kind. Because the bureaucratic usurpers of the Bolshevik mantle, the Stalinists, often found themselves in such a situation (the Cuban CP backing Batista, the Russian embassy in Nanking fleeing to Formosa with Chiang Kai-Shek, etc), but these traitors were in no sense a vanguard, so the whole rhetorical flourish is a case of Simon's armwaving getting so exuberant he ends up hitting himself in the face. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: A fish in water
Bob M writes from the far north (actually just the middle if you look at the map, he lives near Umeå) of Sweden: Buy the way the school principle yesterday announced at a mass gathering of students that Bob will be employed another year at school. This only after being confronted with all the students threatening a strike or riot in school on Friday which would have been my last day.. Two minutes later in my office she screamed at me. "Bob, we don't like having a gun pointed at our heads!" Now this is not "communism" ala Mezaro. But the kids did take a great step showing there social power against a horde of bureaucrats and politicians who are constantly trying to screw them. But this is only one small battle and not winning the war. And it will take a vanguard party at the head of the working class to win the war. This is a concrete sign of the upsurge taking us along with it. Popular social pressure forcing the oppressors to cave in -- however unwillingly or temporarily. Now what we need is for the growing numbers of militants being carried on the wave in various places to link up and join forces to create the vanguard party that is needed to win the war -- in other words needed to make sure this upsurge doesn't ebb away again and leave us high and dry like the last few times (postwar and 1968 for instance). This is also linked to a wave of mass student strikes that have broken out this week up here in the north with the attempts to fire all kurators, school nurses and school phycologists. Interestingly enough it happens to be people claiming to be "Trotskyists" that are being blamed for all this stuff. However not the ICL unfortunately. Of course Bob's individual fate in the school is linked to the mass experience in the schools in his region. This is important stuff. Chile under Allende was full of student mobilizations, as was 1968 a little earlier, and as France has been for many years now. Ten years ago a Swedish government was brought down by a secondary students' mobilization. And Bob should give honour where honour's due -- it's the CWI, Militant, that have put in the organizing spadework and are getting spat on by the reactionaries. Now, they are very sectarian and monopolistic, so their chances of handling this well and succeeding to mobilize nationwide and among the broad working masses are very slim. We've seen the failures they ran into in Britain, in Liverpool and in the Poll Tax mobilization, for instance, which have lost them a very strong vanguard position in that country. But in Sweden at the moment they're the most vigorous force for socialist action. Cheers, Hugh PS Mezsaros's heart's in the right place, but like many academics (and not just academics) he's hanging around the sidelines till he feels more confident that there's something really there to join in with. Those of us who are trying to get the bandwagon rolling shouldn't condemn this so much as see it for what it is, use the good stuff that such observers produce (as opposed to stifling passivizing crap a la Henwood Observatory) and get those who are willing to build the bandwagon now to do a damn good job so it gets moving quicker. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Red Ken or plain old Labour
Dear all, I was wondering what others here thought of the issue of Ken Livingstone standing for Mayor of London. He has made it quite clear that he would want to work with the City of London Stock Market and although he has made some concessions to his old Left allies on the Underground (with which the Tories and Liberals would not great disagree) he is clearly far from rejecting capitalism, even in a gradualist Fabian sense. And yet many on the left (some who do not normally call for a vote for the reactionary Labour Party) will call for voters in London to vote Labour if Livingstone is their candidate. It is much like the usual suspects (SWP et al) calling for a vote for Labour (without illusions, of course!) just because Prescott (an old Trade Unionist) is its deputy leader or merely because it has 20 old-Left winger' still clinging on. As an anti-parliamentarian I am naturally against. As a Marxist oppose to reforminst Social(ist) Democratic Parties like Labour I am again dismade that the Left's response in greater and greater numbers is to continue to follow the coat-tails of such parties. Will they ever manage to break from Labour ? John To my mind it looks like something with the potential of a popular mobilization regardless of who's heading it. Ken Livingstone as an icon is a rallying point for more public influence, public service etc and less profiteering, greed, destruction of civic amenities and so on. There are two reasons to support him like a rope supports a man being hanged. 1) It allows a free popular movement to develop with mass support in which socialist currents can put forward a lot of their own programme, not as Ken's programme but as something Ken should stand on. "Yay, Ken, sock it to 'em, Ken, why don't you do this too, Ken!!" In other words, something like "Great London campaign groups" or whatever, as a grass-roots effort to rally people behind transitional demands for democratic control of local government, more and better public services, job provision etc. 2) It has the potential to split the Blairite Labour Party, because mass support in London is for Ken L and hugely against the manipulation and hypocrisy and anti-worker record of the Blair government and New Labour Party machine. What Blair has shown time and again, and in the London mayoral race more than ever is the way in which bureaucratic centralism is absolutely essential to running a treacherous pro-bourgeois workers' party. Ken L is being compelled to swear allegiance to every comma in a manifesto (not a programme even but an election manifesto!) that hasn't even been written yet! One of the main red-baiting lines rendered useless. This gives us lots of scope for opening peoples' eyes to what's happening and organizing for the demands we think are central. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re:LOV, butterflies and babies
Simon writes, poetically:
Our job is not to pull the baby out of the womb. We are the baby, to use
the metaphor, being born. Or rather, we are a butterfly in the making,
reconstituting from a caterpillar via the pupae phase (the political
understanding, i.e. the form) to bursting from the chrysalis as a new
creature by the logic of its own material existence having a series of
historical forms.
Trouble is, he wipes out reality and its contradictions with this image of
his. If he sees the caterpillar as imperialism, and the butterfly as
socialism, then he sees the same creature, the same agent transforming
itself. But the class whose interests keep imperialism alive is a different
creature, a different agent from socialism. The bourgeoisie will not be
poetically transformed into the socialist producing/owning class, it will
be abolished. And in abolishing the bourgeoisie, the working-class will
also abolish itself. The working-class must act as midwife to get the
socialist baby out of the prison of the imperialist womb.
Simon's metaphor shows that he understands actual historical economic
developments to be natural and ahistorical, the product of one
undifferentiated humanity, and not a process determined by class struggle.
This is of course equally obvious in his criticism of Dave's presentation
of Marx's view of value, in which Simon sees value as the eternal,
historically undifferentiated product of human labour (or worse, essence of
human labour).
This leads to a political line that is compounded of theoretical fatalism
(it'll happen as a natural process, inevitably) and its hyperactive
counterpart, individual heroics ("we, the heroes, must act since no-one
else understands anything). The main expressions of this in the workers
movement or on its fringes today are state capitalist currents (which just
see the Soviet Union emerging from October as more of the same and bringing
no change) and anarchism, petty-bourgeois heroics (usually rhetorical,
sometimes terroristic) that shy away from the concrete political problems
of understanding, organizing and winning the actual class struggle against
the imperialist bourgeoisie.
Marx had a reason for preferring human beings to butterflies when he chose
his metaphors.
Cheers,
Hugh
--- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Mother
How's this for a great piece of journalism? Mother Knows Best Once convinced that they should expend their precious parental energy, mothers go to great lengths to rear their young. Most impressive is the Australian social spider. As her spiderlings mature, she begins to turn to mush. As she liquefies, her children suck her up. Sated from this sacrificial meal of mother, they exercise better manners and forgo eating one another as well. It's from a review by Helen Fisher of "Mother Nature" by Sarah B. Hrdy (Scientific American, Dec 1999, p 98). The review is entitled "Mother Nature is an Old Lady with Bad Habits". Who needs Hollywood? It also makes you wonder what "educational" institutions are really about... Cheers, Hugh naturam expellas furca, tamen usque recurret. You can drive her away with a pitchfork -- Nature runs right back! Horace, ars poetica, x. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re:LOV, butterflies and babies
In his reply to me Simon just gives us more of the same.
But he adds:
And on value, well, we've been over this. You are talking
about suspending the PRICE mechanism.
No, Dave's right here, there's no capitalist price without value, as Marx
makes perfectly clear in the Grundrisse, the Contribution to Political
Economy, the first Book of Capital and Theories of Surplus Value. There may
however be distributive price-fixing mechanisms under a
non-commodity-producing mode of production, but they won't have the price
oscillating around the exchange value as determined by the socially
necessary labour time. Reread Labour, Price and Profit.
The system that treats human labour
as a value, alienating human labour from human existence, is the
abstraction,
No. Capitalism is not an abstraction, it's a very concrete and evil entity.
Just look at what it's doing in Moscow and Grozhny, in the whole of Africa,
in the cities of the US, in the cities of China where the surplus
agricultural labour force is being dumped after it's driven off the land,
and in Latin America, in Colombia for example.
Please, not imperialism. Capitalism.
No way. Imperialist capitalism IS imperialism IS capitalism. Or perhaps
Simon can show us some sweet enclave of non-imperialist capitalism in the
world? (Wait for it)
We can have the whole Leninist
argument separately.
No. Impossible.
The system that treats human labour as a value, alienating human labour
from human existence, is the abstraction,
and judging the "value" is done by an arbitrary method.
According to Marx, the assessment of value is anything but arbitrary. It's
necessary, reproducible and unbelievably powerful and resilient. Trouble is
it's socially inefficient given the present development of the means of
production, and the reason for this is that it's not democratic, not based
on real needs and not cooperatively or consciously done.
The internal logic of capitalism is, since you are treating a human as an
object, their value is based on what it takes to reproduce them as an
object, the same as any other commodity:
Treating labour as a commodity comes first, treating its bearers as an
object comes second, it's a result of commodity fetishism working its way
through the whole of society. The proof of this is the contradiction, which
Simon obviously rejects, pointed out by Marx as early as The Jewish
Question, between the human being as a citizen in civil society (equal
rights and worth, democracy etc) and the human being as a bourgeois(or a
wage-slave) in production (inequality, exploitation, one dollar one vote,
etc). Now really fly Marxists, if they were interested, would be able to
make out a case for the citizen also being an object, but that's not the
point here.
whether this is determined by the
market or by the commissar doesn't matter,
But it does matter. A political revolution against a bureaucratic
("commissar") caste is not the same as a social revolution against a
bourgeois class ("market").
except that the commissar is
taking an arbitrary relationship and then being arbitrary about its
judgement, and claiming to abolish the relationship! How alienated can one
person get?
Is Simon aware of the fact that the companies fix their pre-sale prices in
blind, arbitrary fashion, and that the workings of the Law of Value only
hit them retroactively, after the sale is consummated? So they can never
(and I mean *never* as a matter of fundamental economic principle) *ever*
know in advance if their guess about the price is right in relation to the
value it contains (adjusted for monopoly, high-tech and other distortions).
The bourgeois is a thousand times more alienated than the Stalinist
bureaucrat. The bureaucrat (read Solshenitzyn's Cancer Ward for a wonderful
example) is very firmly linked to political reality, and knows it (the one
in the book scours Pravda each day for any change in the "general line"
that might dump him from his bureaucratic glory). Unlike the members of a
class, the members of a caste are absolutely and consciously dependent on
implacable and permanent repression, since their privilege is arbitrary and
contingent and not the historically necessary product of a whole social and
economic system of production and distribution. Not that the privileges of
exploiting classes don't also depend on permanent repression, it's just
that's it's not always so brutal and open as it is in defending caste
privilege -- just look at all the people fooled by the fact that the
imperialist bourgeoisie occasionally draws in its claws in its heartlands.
This leads to a political line that is compounded of theoretical fatalism
(it'll happen as a natural process, inevitably) and its hyperactive
counterpart, individual heroics ("we, the heroes, must act since no-one
else understands anything).
I am arguing that members of the working class can have the
revolution themselves, rather than have to be led by the nose by some
tinpot bolsheviks!
"Having the
M-TH: Re: Meszaros article
Ian H writes: I do not have the time to say too much, but would like to say that I also found Meszaros' article a really good read, and would like people to take up the challenge to articulate a clear vision and strategy for socialism unemcumbered with the baggage of our political past I'd like him to be a bit more specific about what he thinks is useless baggage from our past and what he thinks is valuable knowledge and experience -- I assume there's something in the past that's worth keeping? Cheers, Hugh PS Whose past is "our" past, by the way? --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: China and law of value.
Dave B's excellent summary of the workings of the Law of Value ends this way: This discussion began with China. The point about getting the LOV right is that it allows us to recognise that once the LOV is suspended the potential is there to replace it with a healthy workers plan that can escape the use/exchange value contradiction and allocate productive resources in advance to produce use-values. What we have seen in China is unfortunately so far not only a failure to achieve that, but an impending full restoration of capitalism in which the LOV returns with all its brutality as we are seeing in Russia. This is making things a bit too easy. What happens in a proto-socialist mode of production like the Soviet Union or Red China is that Primitive Socialist Accumulation has to take place, and this is not just the straightforward replacement of a capitalist process of production and exchange by a socialist one. Since productivity, technology and the rest lag behind the world market in such workers states created out of backward societies, there are huge political and economic contradictions to be overcome. As Dave says, the *potential* is there, but it must be realized by protecting the weaker elements of the new society against the pressures of stronger imperialism. What the history of the 20th century has shown us is the paramount importance of politics, social will, in this. As long as there was sufficient social will in the workers states to protect the new property relations (in fact, as long as the enormous power of the revolutionary working class and its poor peasant allies was not completely hogtied by the bureaucracy), imperialism had to make do with indirect sabotage and warfare (this balance of forces was established in the fiasco of the imperialist attempt to crush the October Revolution by direct invasionary force). The new productive relations were quite clearly shown to be more capable of developing the forces of production than capitalist relations, even if they didn't succeed in catching up with imperialism on the world market, let alone overtaking it. They were also shown to combine this development with a huge increase in popular welfare (housing, education, health) in comparison with similar non-workers states. Once the interests of the bureaucratic caste running the show became so contradictory to the interests of the new mode of production that there was a historical choice of either abolishing the bureaucracy or abolishing the workers state, the primacy of the political level at this stage of development was once again demonstrated. Because the working class both nationally and internationally had been effectively beheaded (its mass leadership was counter-revolutionary, and if these treacherous leaderships had any ideas at all they were bourgeois or petty-bourgeois), the economic performance of the workers states was labelled weak, and this was blamed on the proto-socialist system and not on a) the political incompetence and inadequacy of the bureaucracy, or b) the economic belligerence of imperialism. As a result of the disorganization and lack of class consciousness on the part of the working masses, the bureaucracy was able to capitulate to imperialism, turn itself into a (weak, unstable, pariah) bourgeoisie and proclaim the death of socialism. What it meant was the death of Stalinism. So now we have a clear field, again, in the sense that the main historical obstacle to revolutionary socialism in our century -- Stalinism -- has collapsed. But of course there is no political vacuum, all the reactionary forces are trying to get their hands on the keys to the vault, screaming at the top of their voices and trying to cheat masses of ordinary working people into doing their fighting for them. It's just that, with Stalinism gone, our task is so much easier. All we have to do is show ordinary people that they have no real interest in the reactionary scramble for the keys to the vault, but should join with us and take over the whole caboodle. Why, finally, should the political sphere dominate today when basic Marxism contends that the economic sphere is primary? The reason is simple. Capitalism has outgrown itself. It's further economic expansion is blatantly destructive to whole continents and even to previously spared, relatively privileged working masses in the imperialist heartlands. The conditions for such expansion are in fact mass destruction and the reduction to subhuman conditions of huge numbers of human beings. During the incredibly contradictory postwar boom period, thanks to Stalinist collusion with imperialism, it was possible to make a plausible if untrue case that capitalist economic expansion (a necessary condition for its survival) actually involved general development of the productive forces of humanity. That is no longer the case, as the workers in the imperialist countries (the ones most fooled by the expansion equals development arguments) are discovering
M-TH: Preobrazhensky - the LOV - Primitive Socialist Accumulation
This might hold if Marx had ever restricted himself to the theoretical bits of the first volume of Capital, or had not been aware of the relationship between the laws determining the movement of capital and their empirical manifestation, or had not intended to write sections of Capital dealing with precisely these points. It might even hold if early, revolutionary Soviet Marxists such as Preobrazhensky had not developed the relationship between the operations of the law of value and an economic system in which this law is significantly impaired, such as the proto-socialist Soviet Union with its workers' state. George: Can you provide us with a brief outline of P.'s conception of this? Warm regards George Pennefather Well, it can be summarized in the concept of Primitive Socialist Accumulation. Marx writes about Primitive Capitalist Accumulation in Capital I -- it's what happens when simple commodity production is straining at the leash. Dave B leaves the existence of simple commodity producing societies as an open question, but it's clear from Capital and from the Grundrisse (Pre-Capitalist Modes of Production) that such economies existed as enclaves in feudal states, and at times as statelets of their own, such as the Italian and German city-states (Florence, Venice, Milan, Augsburg etc). Henri Pirenne (in eg Medieval Cities and in Muhammed and Charlemagne provides a very convincing theory of the autonomy of the development of bourgeois/capitalist relations in these municipalities, starting as metastases of capitalist Rome (Roman Law) when the Roman Empire (itself a contradictory slave-owning state) broke up and ending up as Powers in their own right in the High Renaissance (eg Venice). Anyway, for the bourgeois enclaves to make it to statehood, and especially nation-statehood, they needed more capital than was coming in via simple commodity production and exchange. They got it from exploitative operations in trade, money-lending, plunder, confiscation and slavery. Partly they became too strong for the feudal states to crush, and partly they undermined the feudal states by making them utterly dependent on them for loans. An important intermediate phase was that of centralized monarchies whose political and economic base was the city bourgeoisie and the big peasantry (where this existed, as in England and Sweden). And then, when the bourgeoisie was able to assert itself in legislation, it set about transforming the labour force of feudalism into capitalist wage slaves. It ripped the producers away from the few feudal rights they had (their unfree ties to the land, their ownership of certain individual instruments of production, their unfree ties to a dwelling, shared rights to the produce of common land, etc) and forced them off the land where they no longer belonged by right into the cities. As Dave writes, the big thing was to create labour power as a commodity like any other. Preobrazhensky and the Left Opposition see the parallel between Primitive Capitalist Accumulation and Primitive Socialist Accumulation in two things. First the existence of a new and more advanced mode of production as an enclave surrounded by a hostile and more powerful old mode of production -- capitalism within feudalism on the one hand and socialism within capitalism on the other. And second the primacy of political action in strengthening and bringing the embryo of the new mode of production to fruition (Preobrazhensky himself wasn't too hot at this aspect of things, he was a bit abstract and mechanically economistic, and was criticized for it by Trotsky. He also ended up capitulating to Stalinism because of a lack of inner political drive and conviction on this point, and of course he was shot by Stalin in 1937 like Bukharin and so many others -- all good Bolsheviks who weren't up to the enormous demands put on their understanding and practice by the unprecedented historical developments in the revolutionary Soviet Union). So the political measures required for the Soviet Union were those defending the new state on the one hand -- military and trade barriers against imperialism -- and those protecting and encouraging the new relations between producers and consumers on the other -- centralized planning and finance, cooperative and rational production and distribution etc. With the existence of simple commodity production under the NEP it was clear that there was great *dual* pressure on the new system and its political protective armour. On the one hand from inside, with the capitalist enclave within the socialist enclave within the imperialist world-market, and on the other from the outside, with the pressures of the world-market screaming to the peasants (and the less-conscious workers) that "here you have cheap cheap cheap goods that are better than the expensive crap the Bolshies are forcing you to queue for". Preobrazhensky calls this the scissors crisis (the curves for supply and demand, for world prices and
M-TH: RE: C'mon you lot!
Hi all, Being a newcomer on this list, I don't know what you're talking about. It seems to me that we shouldn't be attacking people and we should concentrate more on critiquing their ideas in a constructive manner so that we can formulate better positions and act in the interest of the working class. Calling people scumbags doesn't help. Comradely, Issam mansour OK, Issam, we're agreed on the need for constructive policy suggestions, good positions and acting in the interests of the working class. However, some of the old-timers here consider the people being attacked (the person here being Louis Proyect, a well-known character in left cyber-space) irredeemable sources of destructive criticism, dangerous positions and disaster to the working class. So they attack them. We've had some conflicting suggestions from Rob and Bob recently regarding what should be done to end the horrors -- in Russia, say. What do you think about their ideas? Do you think either of them is on the way to giving the working class and its interests a shove in the right direction? If you had to tell us what three positions you thought were central to good working class policies today, what would they be? Cheers, Hugh == "Changes dictated by social necessity are sure to work their way sooner or later, because the imperative wants of society must be satisfied, and legislation will always be forced to adapt itself to them." Karl Marx, "The abolition of landed property -- Memorandum for Robert Applegarth, December 3 1869" http://csf.Colorado.EDU/psn/marx/Archive/1869-Land/ This is published in the Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol 23 1871-74, p. 131, under the title of "The Nationalisation of the Land". It was written in 1872 as notes for Eugene Dupont, the organizer of the Manchester section of the Working Men's International Association. Dupont's report at the May 8 meeting of the section was published in the International Herald on June 15, 1872. This report, which differs slightly from the notes published in the M-E Archives, is the text published in the Collected Works. * * * "Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie." Communist Manifesto, 1848, end of first section "Bourgeois and Proletarians" * * * "The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat." Transitional Programme -- The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International, 1938, perhaps the most important programmatic document for which Trotsky bore major responsibility. Introduction. * * * And on a lighter note: His lockid, lettered, braw brass collar, Shew'd him the gentleman and scholar. [Rabbie Burruns, The Twa Dogs, 1.13] --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: C'mon you lot!
Nice as slapping bottoms might be, Rob, and I never thought you were a Madonna fan, a more appropriate measure might be to put offenders in the front row of the scrum in the coming final between the Springboks and the All Blacks. Five minutes at tight head would just about do the trick ... If only Proyeccht were still subscribed -- I'd love to see his face as the packs engaged. But since he's not, imagination will have to do. Trouble about not discussing people like him is they're such archetypal scumbags. If they didn't exist we might have to invent them. I don't think "personalities" as such are the issue, it's the "principles" that the likes of Yechhh represent (or since they lack principles, the class interests they so faithfully and energetically serve). Anyhow, since the world's moving a lot faster than it did just a few seasons ago, the likes of Yechhh are becoming too practically irrelevant to cause much of an obstruction any more. So many of the briefly fashionable "left" positions of recent years are ending up on imperialist ministerial platforms that their supposedly Marxist let alone revolutionary credentials get washed away in the ensuing tide of blood. Making things much clearer. Cheers, Hugh G'day Macdonald, I was hoping to let this unhappy little silliness pass, but you're making it difficult for me. I, for one, intend to observe this list's recently mentioned and long-standing policy not to engage in discussions concerning personalities not subscribed to this list (and sad indeed to see that Jerry couldn't live up to a policy to which he explicitly committed himself only last month). And whilst I reckon this 'I'm gonna take my ball and go home' talk is a bit over-the-top, Macdonald, you do remind me of this list's democratically agreed policy and the role of a co-moderator occasionally to lend such commitments some clout. If Thaxists wanna renogotiate the policy, well, fine (although I'd join Russ in passionately casting a no-change vote in such an event). Failing that, if they wanna keep up unproductive personal sniping, Bill and I would have to assume the balance of the list would want us to slap bottoms accordingly. The list has been regaining just a little of its old zest of late. Let's not squash the phoenix in its egg, eh? Cheers, Rob. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: The Left Military Dictatorship (Pakistan)
Here is a brief article from the Labour Party of Pakistan summarizing the first week after the coup. It is apparent how utterly indifferent most of the political forces of that country are to democracy and the freedoms this is supposed to guarantee with respect to organization, assembly and expression. This in turn reflects the lack of class interest in democracy felt by these forces. Those claiming to represent the left and labour obviously represent class interests outside the mass of the working class and the poor, whose only chance of even minimal social, political and cultural development in a capitalist society lies with functioning democratic procedures. It seems obvious that for the majority of the political forces visible in Pakistan at the moment, democracy is seen as more of a threat than a benefit, as it opens the way to real organization and political clout for the working people and the poor masses. Cheers, Hugh The Left and Military Dictatorship in Pakistan By: Farooq Sulehria A week after the dictatorship of Pervaiz Mussaraf have taken over in Pakistan, it seems most of the political parties have rendered their support to the military coup. Unfortunately, the Left parties are also among those who have welcomed the take over. On 18th October, the Pakistan National Conference (PNC) an alliance of 7 Left and radical bourgeoisie parties welcomed the military dictatorship and demanded a strict accountability of the outgoing Muslim League leadership. The decision, reported by Daily Dawn, was taken in its Central Committee meeting held in Lahore on 18th October. Such was the corruption of the Muslim League leaders during the past 30 months that most of the political parties have gone along the popular sentiments in favor of the military dictatorship. The change of the government is generally been welcomed by the masses. It was more of relief feelings than of the support for the military. The Left parties that have supported the military dictatorship include National Workers Party (NWP) established on 2nd June 99 after three Left parties, Pakistan Socialist Party, Awami Jamhuri Party and Pakistan National party decided to merge in one single party. Apart from NWP, Communist Mazdoor Kissan Party has also taken the same stand. These Stalinist Parties have tried to find out the alternatives to the utmost corrupt bourgeoisie parties in the framework of capitalist system. So they have come to the conclusion that military must do some good jobs for them before the masses are ready for democracy. They have believed the nice and charming words of the military dictator General Pervaiz Mussaraf that he is there to clean up the mess. That his main aim is to develop the economy and to have a real accountability of the civilian politicians who have looted the state assets and have not returned the loans. He says that this process will start from 1985. So not mentioning the loot and plunders of the Zia dictatorship from 1977 to 1985. The military dictatorship have given four weeks to those defaulters of the banks to return the loan, otherwise an iron hand will come into action. This is an initial popular clever move by the new dictator to win the sympathies of the masses. The real agenda of the military is to complete the unfinished agenda of IMF and World Bank. That is the rapid privatization, reintroduction of General Sales Tax, devaluation, raising the fuel prices and reducing the trade tariffs. Those who gave support to the military dictatorship also include the Pakistan Peoples Party, the party of Benazir Bhutto. She said in one interview that she is willing to give six months to the military dictatorship to do the accountability. She also offered her other good advises to the General. The present military dictatorship, unlike the previous Zia dictator has not used the religion Islam as one of its main political weapon. It has tried to show a liberal face. So this has been also one reason for the Left parties to give him initial support. As a matter of fact, the present military dictatorship has not used the name martial law. General Pervaiz Mussaraf does not call itself Martial Law administrator but Chief Executive. This is to hide it real face and to please the Imperialists. On the contrary, LPP have taken a firm position to oppose the military dictatorship, to call for a workers and peasant commission to investigate the corruption of the civil and military politicians and bearucracy. It has demanded for an interim government of workers and peasants to hold impartial general elections for a new constitutional assembly. It is not only in words that LPP have demanded but it has helped to organize the first public meeting in Karachi to oppose the dictatorship. On 17th October, a meeting was organized at prestigious Karachi Press Club to pay tribute to a revolutionary workers poet. LPP was one the organizers of the event. Speaking on the occasion. The
M-TH: Pakistan--statement on coup, its causes and labour's interests
Here's a statement by the Labour Party of Pakistan, giving the causes and the probable effects of the coup and declaring the interests of the working class in these events. The LPP is a revolutionary Trotskyist party close to the LIT. Cheers, Hugh == Labour Party Pakistan asks army to go back-Demands workers interim government Lahore, Press Release The Labour Party Pakistan (LPP) while strongly opposing the army coup has demanded of the army to go back to the barracks. LPP has further demanded to set up a workers interim government to hold fresh elections for a new legislative assembly. An emergency meeting of the LPP national Executive Committee held at Lahore took stock of latest political situation and its impacts on working class. The Executive Committee issued the following statement after the meeting. The army coup mirrors the deep-rooted economic crisis that has exposed the internal contradictions and infighting of the Pakistan ruling class. Through General Pervaiz Mussaraf retirement, Nawaz Sharif, exPrime Minister, wanted to strengthen his dictatorial power while army through its coup has proved itself as the ruler of the country. Nawaz attempt at grabbing power was deplorable while army coup is even more deplorable rather unacceptable. We strongly condemn the army coup. The new government set up even if it is a civil set up, will be nothing but a puppet in the army hands. The military may also tend to continue but it depends on deal with IMF and World Bank. The coup was against the planning of US imperialism but US and army will compromise. The new government will use accountability as a pretext to continue but its accountability will be nothing but eyewash. The new government will not be able to recover loans from defaulters. On the other hand,masses will be taxed even more in a futile bid to overcome economic crisis. The lack of protest against the coup proves the utter impopularity of the Nawaz regime. The Nawaz government was unpopular because of its economic policies and the new set up will get unpopular like the previous Nawaz government, as the new government will have to carry out the same economic policies. The army coup will sharpen the national question in all the three smaller provinces. If army resort to dictatorial steps, it will further aggravate the situation in small provinces. Masses might feel a relief in army coup but soon they will be disillusioned. The trade union movement, working class as a whole, peasants, free press and political parties will suffer at the lost of democratic rights. The class struggle will suffer most of all. Now the working class will have to fight back for democratic rights, in addition to their genuine rights and demands. The LPP demands 1- Army should return to barracks immediately 2- An interim workers peasant's government is set up to hold the ruling class accountable. 3- This workers peasant interim governmentshould hold elections for a new legislative assembly 4- Democratic rights be restored forthwith 5- No ban should be imposed on meetings,demos, and processions under section 144. LPP vows to mobilize the working class and peasants to press for these demands. It will launch a campaign for the restoration of democratic rights and it will not accept any attempt by the military to impose martial law. --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Pakistan Urgent -- mobilize against the coup
I just received this from a comrade in Brazil. The events in Pakistan affect a huge and rapidly radicalizing working class. Not to mention the effects on Pakistani workers abroad. Cheers, Hugh _ Comrades, Today, October 10th there was a military coup in Pakistan. Apparently, because we only have information from CNN and BBC, the coup was successful. The airport of Islamabad is closed as the TV and radio stations. There is no information on the objectives and reasons of the coup. What we know is that there was some unhappines among the militaries because of the war against India on Cashemire some months ago. Not even in the last messages we received from there [was there any mention of] military mobilization or the possibilities of a coup. A comrade from Spain was there in the last weeks [for a] Conference but has left the country last thursday and maybe he can have more informations. [...] For all that this coup means for the forces of Marxism and in general it's important the immediate mobilization of the left against this coup and its consequences, including in relation to the situation with India and the question of the nuclear weapons. M B, PSTU --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: History and institutional malignance
Rob confesses: I have to rant. Australia still hasn't a - withdrawn recognition of Indonesian sovereignty of East Timor b - expressed open support for Habibie against Wiranto c - withdrawn aid d - withdrawn our embassy staff from Djakarta and expel the Indonesian staff from Canberra e - stopped training and cooperating with members of the Indonesian military f - loudly proclaimed to the world that all should do the same g - done a single fucking thing Surprise, surprise. What does Rob expect of a sub-imperialist state? Certainly not the truth. And it has done many things -- it's been supporting all the policies Rob is appalled at. It is a- deliberately maintaining recognition of Indonesian sovereignty over East Timor b- refusing to support the line Habibie has been peddling to the media c- kept pumping in resources to Indonesia in the guise of aid d- maintained full diplomatic relations with Indonesia e- kept training and cooperating with the notoriously vicious and reactionary Indonesian military f- made sure that its imperialist allies know it's still toeing the line g- busting a gut to kept all this the way it is and to keep a lid on any potential public reaction. I'd recommend Rob goes to the library and digs out the Collected Works of Marx and Engels where he can read about Palmerston's (ie British imperialism's) public agenda and secret real agenda in relation to Russia, mainly in relation to the Crimean war. Vols 12, 13, 14 and 15. Then he'd see what Chomsky, useful as he is, should really be doing. Of special interest in Vol 12 is Marx on "Lord Palmerston", p 341, in Vol 13 Marx "The Secret Diplomatic Correspondence" p 84, Vol 14 "Lord Palmerston" p 14 and "Traditional English Policy" p 584, and Vol 15 "Revelations of the Diplomatic History of the 18th century" p 25. [snip] The Indonesian military are slaughtering the men and removing the women and kids to other islands. That's what they've done for decades. No surprises there. Based on the media consensus that 4 women and children have been forcibly removed, we're talking about the deaths of about 15000 men right there. This is already so much bigger than Kosovo, the latter doesn't even deserve to be in the same sentence. We have to keep in mind just how *big* this is. Rob shouldn't dismiss Kosova just because of differences in scale. What Kosova has done is provide the working class of the imperialist countries with a ringside seat at the kind of show the imperialists put on everywhere and always. It's even made the intermediate strata sit up and think -- the Guardian has a snap poll on readers' opinion regarding the need for UN intervention, and at the moment opinion is equally divided. The usual petty-bourgeois cop-out of running to the UN or some other fake-progressive proxy for imperialism is dead in the water now, thanks to the experience provided by first Bosnia then Kosova. Wiranto is doing the same thing the 'new order' did in 1965, when last a decisive section of the military didn't like the direction the government was taking. A million people were killed then and I reckon a number of the same order is not to be rejected as beyond possibility now. Oz and the US stood by (indeed actively helped) then, and, based on the above So what's new? And thus to my second theme: just because the vast majority of people strongly hold a view on something, our institutional context is such that this sentiment has no hope of affecting anything. We are impotent in our own country and our own world. More than ever, what Washington decides, and what Canberra might expect it to decide, determines who lives and who dies. Because we ignore history, we are caught by surprise at every turn. Because we never think to look at the ideas that constitute us socially (like the sovereignty of 'the individual' and concomitant notions of 'democracy'), we have become helpless. Like rabbits caught in the headlights of an approaching truck. The extermination of a people is a lot more than the tolling of a bell, but it is that, too. If we can but sit by and watch such an obscenity, in full ghastly knowledge of what's happening, and if we find ourselves in an order that reproduces these nightmares relentlessly, then we should at least realise what it means. Someone will be next, and someone after that. And there'll be nothing we'll be able to do about it unless we go back to basics, learn the lessons of our history, and reject the sway of our institutions. Or one day, it'll be our turn. We're better than our institutions. Sure, and nobody's forcing us to be in THEIR bloody institutions either. What I'd say is that if we happen to wake up and "find ourselves" (oh my!) "in an order that reproduces these nightmares relentlessly" then we should hop out of bed and get into an alternative order that fights this. It's not just a question of rejecting the sway of "our" (ie THEIR) institutions, but of building counter-institutions able to
M-TH: CWG-NZ statement on East Timor
Good one, Dave. More considered reaction later. The important thing of course is that calling on the imperialists to clean up a mess they created themselves is like giving patients with typhoid cholera-infected water to drink. Or as Moreno loved to say, it's the solution of the "bombero loco" -- the insane firefighter -- who hoses down a burning house with a tankful of gasoline. Imperialists out of South-East Asia! Indonesian nationalist oppressors out of East Timor! The enemy is at home -- workers in imperialist countries should block imperialist intervention and work to get organizational and material aid to their class comrades in East Timor and Indonesia. Cheers, Hugh A statement on the situation in East Timor by Communist Workers' Group of NZ. 6 September. Printed in Class Struggle # 29 September-October 1999 East Timor - A national revolution betrayed. Long before the overwhelming vote for Independence on August 30, the explosion of violence in East Timor was totally predictable. Ever since the leaders of Fretilin were forced to abandon the armed struggle for the peaceful process of UN negotiated solution, it was clear Indonesia would not give up without a fight. The Golkar regime has made no secret of its purpose in bringing in migrants and arming paramilitaries. It wants to hang on to East Timor because it is has rich resources. Its illegal occupation has been backed by the US, Australia and NZ for 24 years. In the face of this reality, to believe that it was possible to make a peaceful transition to independence is a criminal betrayal of the people of East Timor. The only course possible from the start has been for armed struggle to defend the Independent state of East Timor declared by Fretilin in 1975. In the crisis today, workers around the world must call for the right to self-defence of the East Timorese, for a total ban on any military and political support for the Indonesian regime, and demand the immediate withdrawal of all Indonesian and paramilitary forces! A Victory for the Armed Resistance? The overwhelming vote for independence has not set off massive celebrations among the 78.5% who survived 25 years of repression to vote for separation. Instead it has sparked off a mounting campaign of terror by the pro-Jakarta armed thugs. Daily reports show the onesided war being waged by the small minority of para-militaries against the mass of the population. The thugs are being allowed free reign to terrorise and murder pro-independence supporters. Their purpose is to act as stooges for the Indonesian regime to destabilise the process of secession to keep control of the territories with the richest resources in the West adjoining West Timor. This crisis is the result of nearly 25 years of Indonesian occupation and resettlement of East Timor. After many years of military campaigns to immobilise Fretilin, the downfall of Suhato brought the fate of East Timor to a head. Habibie only agreed to a referendum under pressure from the US which wants to pose as the champion of 'human rights'.. No doubt Habibie expected that the years of brutal repression and the policy of resettling migrants in East Timor would have created a majority for integration with Indonesia. Now that the result is such a resounding victory for Independence, Jakarta is attempting to once more hang onto the territory by force. It will it take the Jakarta regime until November to ratify the vote. Only then will it agree to the UN implementing the transition to independence. This gives the pro-Jakarta forces over two months in which to occupy the key regions they want to retain and to politically cleanse these regions of Independencias. When the UN finally gets into gear it will be too late to undo the genocide. Can the "West" intervene unilaterally? Yes it can. The US sidestepped the UN last year over Iraq, and more recently in unleashing the NATO bombing of Kosovo. But will it, and ought it to intervene? The peacenik left in the West, including Australian and NZ, was softened up to the point of giving backhanded support to the US in Kosovo. While opposing NATO's bombing in principle, it blamed Milosovic's "ethnic cleansing" of Kosovo for the intervention. The effect was to qualify its opposition to NATO by calling for NATO to turn itself into a 'peacekeeping' force in a soverign territory in the name of 'human rights'. The same with East Timor. While preferring a UN solution, most of the left are calling for immediate action by the US to defend the 'human rights' of the people of East Timor. This is like calling on the tiger to guard the calf. The US was the main backer, along with Australia and NZ, of Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in the first place. It is total hypocrisy or naivety at least to suppose that the biggest enemy of the declaration of Independence in 1975, can now turn around and be the defender of 'human rights'. When East Timor was abandoned by Portugal in 1975, its militant front,
RE: M-TH: Bolshevism lives
Its interesting how the national question has come up as THE difficult one. Why? Because it's still unsolved, because the bourgeoisie and the petty-bourgeoisie have no solutions at all nowadays, and because the oppression and exploitation of weak nations (semi-colonies and to an increasing extent re-colonies, that is colonies again in everything but name) and minorities is getting worse. All this paradoxically enough in a world in which the apartheid regime in South Africa was smashed by a revolutionary war and where the lip-service paid to women and some minorities in laws etc is much greater than ever before. Combined and uneven development. (Read Marx on the Jewish Question for the basic contradictions underlying all this.) Hi Hugh! Could you clarify what you mean by the above. Most of us have read a number of the classics. However the point is how one interprets this stuff with a programmatic and tactical answer. Which I don't think your recent line on Lesotho adequately addresses. And if we are going to have a discussion on South Africa then we should address the whole Southern cone connected to the key position that the South African proletariat will play in all this. Bob The clarification of the general position (recolonization, the increasing contradictions of combined and uneven development, etc) will come in the LIT's world document after our forthcoming congress. Hopefully the relationship between democratic mobilizations on a huge scale (ie in South Africa against the apartheid regime) and socialist revolution (in other words, the Permanent Revolution) will also be made clearer than it has been in the past. As for South Africa, get stuck in! Do you see any relationship at all between the unsolved democratic problems of these countries and the ability of the southern African proletariat to lead the masses there to socialism (ie to expropriate capital and set up workers states)?` The reference to On the Jewish Question is straightforward. Marx deals with the contradictions between the individuals in bourgeois society seen on the one hand as Citizens with all the rights, equality before the law, personal inviolability etc, and on the other as what he calls Bourgeois, in other words actors in the process of capitalist production, where the only thing that matters is a person's relationship to the means of production, either as their owner or as the owner of nothing but an individual body's labour power. On the one hand Equality, civic solidarity, etc, on the other Exploitation and degradation. Marx also deals with this in the transition in Capital from circulation to production (Capital I, Part 2, chapter 6, last three paragraphs). Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: NATO wins, state caps basics
Neil throws a turnip: Trotskyisms shameless defense of state capitalism..., etc Shume mishtake shurely- or does anyone else, apart from Trots, indulge in this befuddled conceit? Russ What befuddled conceit? State capitalism or the idea of degenerated and deformed workers states? Trotskyism never defended the Stalinist regimes of these degenerated (USSR), revolutionary but deformed (Yugoslavia, Vietnam, China, Cuba) and deformed workers states. It characterized them as counter-revolutionary regimes and the implacable enemies of the world working class. Which has been demonstrated. The regime is not the same as the state. State capitalism begs the whole question of private bourgeois ownership as the legal basis of the capitalist mode of production. It's essentially unhistorical, cos it doesn't take into account any transitional form of state or mode of production between capitalism and communism. No real proletarian dictatorship, no proto-socialist mode of production, nothing. Pure hypocritical petty-bourgeois utopianism. Manifested in the useless policies offered by the SWP in Britain over the years in the major battles of the working class nationally and internationally. Dave B's comments are more interesting, but too high-pitched and very vague. This discussion about the war and its results is the absolutely central issue for revolutionary Marxist workers parties, and it needs time, tolerance and seriousness to reach a useful conclusion. Which means that Dave must be a lot more explicit about what he means when he accuses the left of not defending Yugoslavia in Kosova. Since he doesn't mention the need for Kosovar Albanian self-determination, which he himself has defended, this leaves an opening for interpreting his position as the usual Staliinist crap about "forget all the democratic shit, let's defend the progressive side", as if the Milosevic regime was progressive. As if the Yugoslav state was a viable workers state, and as if its control of Kosova was the most natural thing in the world. As to the results themselves, it's the kind of indeterminate, loose-ended shit the Brits are only too happy to roll around in. As I've said umpteen times already. We've got the protectorate. We've got total confusion as to who does what and who controls what. NATO claims to defend the Kosovars, but Yugoslavia is still sovereign. In fact the situation is perfect for hypocrites like Blair, because the ground is laid for an Ulster situation where both the Kosovar Albanians AND the Serbs can be relied on to provoke each other into violent incidents that can be labelled as terrorism and used as the perfect excuse for continued occupation. Imperialism has a foothold in the Balkans, with split and weakened, unviable statelets rotting in the region. At last. What Dave says here is right, but vague. It must be trumpeted out that the only thing that held the imperialists back for so long was the Yugoslav revolution. And that the Milosevic regime (along with the other Balkanized petty-bourgeois nationalist freaks running the statelets) is a counter-revolutionary perversion of this revolution, not its continuation. I haven't got time at the moment to go into the relations between the US and EU and Russia with respect to all this, but at the moment would be inclined to see it as a stalemate between the US, Germany and Russia on the surface, and a gain for British imperialism in terms of position in the imperialist constellations. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Does the labor theory of value hold?
A couple of remarks in relation to Hans's nice answer on the labour theory of value. Hugh asked me the "Gretchenfrage" whether I think the labor theory of value is valid. Lovely German expression there, the "Gretchenfrage". Collins German dictionary doesn't do it justice with "crunch question" or "sixty-four thousand dollar question", cos even though it gets the crucial character across, and even mentions money, it fails to get the cultural resonance. Duden's Universalwoerterbuch pinpoints it better, but in German, so here's a translation: [after the question put by Gretchen to Faust: "Now tell me, how do things stand with you and Religion?" [[Nun sag, wie hast Du's mit der Religion?]] Goethe, Faust I, 3415] a question to someone that touches on a sensitive [[or delicate, or infected -- the German word is "heikel"]] set of problems, often involving matters of conscience; Poor Gretchen, so right, so loving, and so hard-done-by. Poor Faust, so full of aspiration and energy, and so desperate to succeed, and all he does is fuck up, especially with poor sweet Gretchen. Ach und Weh... Meine Ruh' ist hin, mein Herz ist schwer, Ich finde sie nimmer und nimmer mehr... We won't go into what Hans in his Studiezimmer might have for Faustian dreams... Hans doesn't cop out. His answer is straight from the shoulder. Yes I think so; Excellent, and in fact the only reasonable explanation for the confidence with which he teaches Marx and can field the NATO-like bombardment of doubts and objections that assails him each time he runs his introductory course -- because the "introduction" is in fact the heart of the matter and where all the really hardcore grind needs to be done. Not armed with the sword of faith, but clad in the armour of conviction, Hans braves it all and emerges each time a little stronger and a little more adept and with his armour a little shinier and at times even sparkling... (Unlike some usurpers of the Marxian name we could mention, who just rot internally more and more as time goes by, and end up with their flesh melting away and flaking off, like the undead in horror films when they're exposed by the good and the true, so all that's left is a corroded skull seething with maggots...) however here it is necessary to say a little bit about what it means that a certain "law" holds in a society. Answer: Value, the abstract labor congealed in the products, is "real" in the sense that it generates its own causal effects, efects which go far beyond the motives and preferences of the individuals. It is wrong to start economics with individual preferences as mainstream economics does. [...] The labor theory of value therefore says that the organizing principle of capitalist market economies must not be sought in the markets themselves but in the fact, valid in the capitalist economy, that all labor counts as an instantiation of a homogeneous society-wide reservoir of "abstract human labor." This social equality of all labor does not govern production directly but through the mediation of the market. The market is the social institution which induces the producers to take the actions by which, behind their backs, abstract labor is elevated to the governing social principle of production. Marx uses for all this the shorthand formulation that exchange value, i.e., the ability of commodities to exchange themselves for other commodities, is "the mere mode of expression, `form of appearance,. of some substance distinguishable from it." The core of this is: Value, the abstract labor congealed in the products, is "real" in the sense that it generates its own causal effects, and exchange value, i.e., the ability of commodities to exchange themselves for other commodities, is "the mere mode of expression, `form of appearance,. of some substance distinguishable from it." In other words the real, substantial cause -- the state of fact -- underlying exchange relations and all that follows from them is "VALUE, the abstract labour congealed in the products". Which means -- and this is where John runs into a brick wall together with everybody else (myself included of course) who faces this concept of social production whose mind has been formed in our capitalist society with its perverted, fetishistic views of production and social relations -- that until you drop the reality you're used to attributing to money, or rather until you transfer this reality first from the pointer to the token of money (credit/confidence) to the token of money (paper/state-proclaimed money) to the universal equivalent commodity as money (gold etc) and finally to the value underlying this universal equivalent, ie abstract labour as explained in the labour theory of value, you haven't got a chance of understanding what Marx is on about. It shouldn't be difficult. Most of us can appreciate the reality of a dollar, and its abstract expression, the reality of US imperialist clout.
M-TH: Re: Marx on GOLD
[This post was delayed because majordomo thought the word "unserviceable" was meant to be an unsubscription request] Rob is very defensive of Doug: Explains Doug (following Marx every inch of the way, Bob), credit to producers funds greater capacity beyond consumption, while credit to consumers stretches consumption. Result: Ponzi units. A disruption comes along (eg a bit of retrenchment, an interest rate hike etc), debts become unserviceable, the finance sector takes a hit, panic ensues, and we get milked to bail out the financiers. In economies where this ain't possible, an old-fashioned depression is simply had. In the end, says Doug, 'money of the mind' collides with matter. Doug does not at all follow Marx every inch of the way, as he holds no truck with the labour theory of value. He is just a skilled scavenger of some of the results of Marx's work. Something that Marx derived as a result of scientific analysis on the basis of fundamental theory (the labour theory of value) is treated by Headwood as an empirical snippet floating inexplicably on the surface of a great swamp. And even if Doug admits that ' "money of the mind" collides with matter' in poor countries, there's still no scientific explanation given of this. An awful lot of Marx for a petit bourgeouis Keynesian tract, eh? This remark concerns the observation that ownership is all-important. What's so Marxian about that? All this remark shows is the huge gap between the vast majority of ideologizing vulgar economists and empirical reality. Except that most vulgar economists just take it for granted that ownership is all-important -- they just don't like admitting it openly. Like the upper classes and sexuality in Victorian times. Anyway, credit ain't tied to anything because capital can't afford it to be. This is just nonsense and Rob knows it. Credit is tied at some remove to actual collateral assets. Then everyone plays musical chairs and the last ones standing lose their seats. Capital could even less afford credit that *wasn't* tied to anything. Capitalism's problem is that it consequently relies wholly on confidence in the future. This is the vulgar myth. If capitalism was based on something as intangible as this, it would never have developed or flourished or endured the way it has. Now if Rob and others would trouble to look for the real basis of the system, they might get somewhere. And this is what this question is all about. Hans's post gives good pointers to finding an answer to John W's original question: There is a group of us here in Manchester slowly going through Das Kapital and although we can get to grips with most of the first few chapters, one problenm we cannot resolve is the relationship between the amount of gold and the amount of paper money, coins, credit, etc. Is the value of the coin money equal the amount of gold, is it proportional or is there any direct relation? o they just have to have some Gold? In the exchange C-M-C does M = the amount of concretised labour in an amount of gold equal to that required to make C ? Hans says: According to Marx, the first function of money is "measure of value." Capitalism can only function if there is a reliable and stable way to measure the values of the commodities, so that the capitalists know whether they are making profits or not. At Marx's time, the stability of money as a measure of value was guaranteed by the convertibility of money into gold. This guaranteed the value of money alright, but it was very harsh; a lot of output had to be sacrificed in order to maintain the value of money. During the Great Depression, the gold standard was replaced by inconvertible credit money. This made things much more elastic, and therefore provided the institutional underpinnings for monopoly pricing, regulation of wages by collective bargaining, deficit spending by the public sector, and lender of last resort interventions. This ``greatly contributed to the amazing economic expansion of the first two postwar decades.'' (Robert Guttmann, ``How Credit Money Shapes the Economy'' M.E. Sharpe, 1994). Since WWII, the dollar has taken the role of international money. Although the dollar is not convertible into gold and therefore has not intrinsic value, its value is maintained by the monetary policy of the USA, the largest integrated economy of the world (before the EU), and the dollar's international acceptance is enforced by US military power. The bombing of Yugoslavia shows what happens to a country which does not open its economy unconditionally to international capital. Still, gold reserves have remained substantial parts of the currency reserves held by the capitalist nations. According to the 1998 Annual Report of the IMF, p.\ 109, http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/ar/98/pdf/file08.pdf the share of gold holdings in total reserves was 44% in the 1980s, and has declined during the 1990s, it is 14% at the end of 1997. But international instability
Re: M-TH: Marx on GOLD
John W writes: Thanks for all your replies but now I am completely confused. How can money - as the universal measure of value - function if it does not itself have any value? If value is determined by the labour time necessary for its production. Money does have value the same as any other commodity -- the universal equivalent is a commodity and needs to be. The confusion comes from all the socially authorized proxies for the universal equivalent which are in themselves lacking in value, merely being tokens for the actual equivalent. Marx in Capital and elsewhere gives plenty of examples of what happens when valueless tokens fail in their function. He also gives examples of money which is actually made from the universal equivalent commodity causing problems precisely because it *does* have a value of its own -- when this value strays too far from the state decreed value, the state loses and the money takes on a life of its own until the state eats humble pie and adjusts its dictated evaluation of the currency. This also happens beneath the surface of presentday capitalist society, too, of course, showing that the hybrid universal equivalent commodity is still concrete enough to take on a life of its own and screw up the state's desire to proclaim the value of its own currency without consideration for the realities of capitalist production and distribution. Obviously gold need not be used money of account or the circulating medium but surely in the exchange C-M-C the three items must be commensurable. If 2 coats = hundredweight of corn then M must embody the same amount of socially necessarry labour time as is contained in the coats and the corn. Is this wrong? It's right, of course. An equivalent is only an equivalent if it in fact is equivalent. And the thing being equivalated so to say is the socially necessary labour time. The last problem I have with the replies is that why does the Bank of England still hold gold reserves for all the UK banks and moves them from one to another at the end of the days trading? This is also done at Fort Knox for balancing the accounts between countries. Is this just because they misunderstand that it is only paper money enforced by military power that gives value. Oh no. It's cos they're forced to observe the realities, however little they might believe in them. Paper money enforced by military power does not give value. This is a key misunderstanding. What it does is represent a credible token for value, which is an utterly different kettle of fish. Still mystified by gold, Gold is no mystery, it's the shenanigans it gets up to when it gets cast as money in the capitalist process of reproduction and distribution. Understand this process and the role of value in it, and you'll understand both money and gold. Basically, nothing comes of nothing. E nihil nihilo. Cheers, Hugh == "Changes dictated by social necessity are sure to work their way sooner or later, because the imperative wants of society must be satisfied, and legislation will always be forced to adapt itself to them." Karl Marx, "The abolition of landed property -- Memorandum for Robert Applegarth, December 3 1869" http://csf.Colorado.EDU/psn/marx/Archive/1869-Land/ This is published in the Collected Works of Marx and Engels, Vol 23 1871-74, p. 131, under the title of "The Nationalisation of the Land". It was written in 1872 as notes for Eugene Dupont, the organizer of the Manchester section of the Working Men's International Association. Dupont's report at the May 8 meeting of the section was published in the International Herald on June 15, 1872. This report, which differs slightly from the notes published in the M-E Archives, is the text published in the Collected Works. * * * "Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie." Communist Manifesto, 1848, end of first section "Bourgeois and Proletarians" * * * "The world political situation as a whole is chiefly characterized by a historical crisis of the leadership of the proletariat." Transitional Programme -- The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International, 1938, perhaps the most important programmatic document for which Trotsky bore major responsibility. Introduction. * * * And on a lighter note: His lockid, lettered, braw brass collar, Shew'd him the gentleman and scholar. [Rabbie Burruns, The Twa Dogs, 1.13] --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re: Reforming Capitalism
Doug Henwood wrote: Hugh Rodwell wrote: The reason our indirect (not so bloody indirect actually) apologists for capital (such as Doug and Chris, with Rob flapping around them like one of Dante's trimmers on the banks of the Styx) [...] keep trying to make us think that capital is doing OK and will save the world if only it's managed properly, is that they cannot conceive of a society without capital. Here's one of many reasons why "revolutionary" Marxists are so fucking exasperating. Capital is "doing OK" only in the sense that it is politically secure. The Asian financial crisis that some of the more fevered among us thought would bring on the long-awaited death agony seems not to have done its terminal work. Maybe next time. Capitalism is not politically secure. It requires an enormously active and expensive (and destructive and suffocating) apparatus of repression and menace to survive. Without the political repression, the exploitation relations of capital vs labour wouldn't survive a day. As for death agony, Doug just doesn't know what the phrase means. It means the long struggle of an organism against impending death, not the death itself. The death itself is a release from the death struggle. Now if the October revolution and its consequences aren't sufficient to get into Doug's wooden head that capitalism as a system is facing imminent death, historically speaking, in world terms, then the only thing that will convince him is the death itself. Because October expropriated capital in vast areas of the world, survived the imperialist reaction (albeit gravely wounded) and, despite being run by a regime of counter-revolutionary imperialist agents, managed to meet basic social needs for decades without mechanisms of capitalist exploitation. This without having hegemony in the world market as far as automatic economic operations go. No healthy economic system would have failed to wipe the floor with the opposition put up by the Soviet Union and its fellow proto-socialist states. But these states represent the new historical system, and imperialism represents the old, worn-out, dysfunctional and obsolete system. It took decades for the Stalinist counter-revolutionaries to hand the state founded by October back to the capitalists. For me and any reasonable observer this all indicates that capitalism as a system is dying. This was obviously Marx's view and his studies of the system give us a scientific ground to corroborate our observations. It's not just impressionism, but logically validated. So if capitalism is dying, it's in its death agony. It's as simple as that. And as anyone knows, this fight with death can be short or protracted, can have periods of apparent recovery, long depressions, stagnation, sudden bursts of fever, etc. If we compare the political superstructure with medical care, then imperialism is treating itself to a hugely expensive life support system, but nothing more. The role of the treacherous leaderships and the various apologists for capital is simply to keep the patient in the machine, and stop the people pulling the plug on it. So, as long as Doug confuses "death agony" with "death", we'll be treated to more of the same shit. For him, obviously, not dead means the same as full of beans, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and ready to rock. He ought to reread the Tale of the Ancient Mariner and cop an eyeful of the Nightmare Life-in-Death instead. Capital is not "doing OK" in the sense that it is not delivering a materially stable, socially enriching, and ecologically sustainable life to most of the people on earth. Well, I declare! The challenge for "revolutionary" hacks like you, Hugh, is to translate that sense of non-OKness into a real political movement. I'm afraid invoking Trotsky won't do it. I'm not a "hack". Headwood is a hack. He turns out column inches to order for money. Hence his one-line cheapos (just lerve the charity!) on Thaxis. The political movement is there. It just lacks leadership and direction. Despite the openly treacherous leadership (example: the British trade union leadership, and the "Labour"! party leadership during the Liverpool dockers strike, against "reforms" that aimed to bring British docks back to the nineteenth century) many powerful struggles (such as the dockers in Liverpool and elsewhere) have taken place and constantly spring up afresh. At the moment they are gathering steam and clout. Trotsky can be used the same as Marx, Engels, Lenin and others can be used. Using isn't the same as "invoking". Doug's semantics are as confused as his own political recipes. They do not see capital as a historical development from previous non-capital forms of production, and they do not see it as developing into a subsequent non-capital form of production. Funny, I thought the passage Chris quoted from Marx and then me showed exactly that. But
M-TH: Re: Reforming Capitalism
Buford writes: At 15:36 30/05/99 +0200, Hugh wrote what was only his second contribution in 4 weeks, despite a post at 4 weeks ago emphasising that we are in a revolutionary situation. My political activity is not directly proportional to my activity on Thaxis. A period with few posts does not mean anything more than that I am posting less. My own theory of his relative silence is that on the question of Kosovo he has major differences with Bob Malecki tactically and strategically, and instead of arguing on the merits of the case, he thinks it important to keep an opportunist bloc with Bob, because This is ridiculously individualistic. My positions in no way depend on Bob's positions. It's obvious to anyone who can read that Bob and I differ on important aspects of the NATO/Serbian/Kosovar war. A united front allows us to act together on points on which we are in agreement. I don't need an opportunist bloc with Bob or anyone because my organizational principles take differences into account. This is something a Stalinist will never understand. I can cooperate with Stalinists and Serb chauvinists against the NATO aggression precisely because I agree with them that the bombing must stop and that NATO is pursuing an aggressive war against Serbia. But I also reserve the right to demand self-determination for Kosova and to demand an end to the genocidal policies of the Milosevic Serb chauvinist regime. This fundamental of workers' democracy is central to any hopes of building a broad movement against the imperialists and their system. It's all the crisis of leadership, as Trotsky said. He hopes by minimising his differences, Bob will listen to his lead. This is puerile. Bob has his line, and I have mine. The closeness of our collaboration depends on the closeness of our positions. Any lead will come from a revolutionary organization, not an individual sounding off on a discussion list. Want to help bring a revolutionary crisis to a successful conclusion? Help build a revolutionary working-class leadership like the LIT. Now this makes sense... Hence also the froth with which he tries to attack what I and Doug have written as non-revolutionary. Revolution entails doing stuff to bring an end to the rule of capital. Praising capitalism because it is constantly reforming itself, socializing in spite of itself and in general doing all our work for us better than people who seriously and consciously try to change society is doing stuff to passivize the masses, smear revolutionaries and prolong the rule of capital. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: Reforming Capitalism
Rob writes among other things: Yeah, some argue that we in the west are now internalising a contradiction that used to manifest at the class level (many of us are both workers and depend for our retirements on extractions via stocks). This places the contradiction, according to a nice English bloke called David Hawkes (with whom Doug and I have argued on this point) more accurately as capital versus labour rather than bourgeoisie versus proletariat. I still don't feel like I own the means of production, though. Or, to the pathetic degree I do through my superannuation fund, I exercise no control (I've no idea where my wages have been invested and do not receive the full extent of the plunder that's been on offer over these recent years - but I bet I wear most of the pain when it comes, as it shall). ... It is not a question of whether capitalism will be reformed - it is reforming itself all the time. Exactly. Some of us reckon we could play a conscious orchestrated hand in that flux, and some of us see this as socdem fantasy at best or class-treacery at worst. So the question is not whether reforms, but whether the reforms will be pushed forward in a negative way or a positive way. I would appreciate more discussion of Marx's meaning here - and the reference. Here I'm with you, Chris. I have three days' marking before me right now - but yeah, this is worth talking about in a big way right now. Let's look at Marx with one eye and at 1999 with the other. I can already think of some bits in the Grundrisse notebooks and Contribution to Critique ... I'll get back to you. Chris argues as if any reforms at all are anathema to revolutionary Marxists. This is crap. The question is who initiates the changes and why. The postwar welfare state era in Europe was initiated by the bourgeoisie as an expensive concession to buy off the working class before it became conscious of the revolutionary character of its demands and especially its own social clout. With the help of the Stalinists in Moscow and the CPs worldwide, the bourgeoisie succeeded. As for the present stage, "reforms" is just a euphemism for slash and burn reaction, so why anyone at all apart from the bourgeoisie and their spittle-licking Third Way social-democrat and recycled Stalinist pals would welcome such "reforms" is a mystery. As for Marx's meaning, it was always that the question at the heart of capitalist society was the exploitation of labour by the mechanism of unequal exchange between labour and capital. Labour sells its labour power, whose exercise produces value in far greater amounts than the labour power costs. Because of the sale (variable capital for labour power), capital acquires the right to appropriate the labour and its value. Whatever pirouettes the capitalists, their direct representatives and apologists, and their indirect agents and apologists try and dazzle us with, the choreography is less important than the dance. Until the rule of capital is ended, this expoitation will continue. The reason our indirect (not so bloody indirect actually) apologists for capital (such as Doug and Chris, with Rob flapping around them like one of Dante's trimmers on the banks of the Styx) keep trying to make us think that capital is doing OK and will save the world if only it's managed properly, is that they cannot conceive of a society without capital. They do not see capital as a historical development from previous non-capital forms of production, and they do not see it as developing into a subsequent non-capital form of production. For them production is capital and capital is production (same crap as the market socialists), period. But if Rob would flap less and look about him more, he'd see just how energetically the Dougs and Chrises attack revolutionary analyses and policies, and how eager they are to support bourgeois alternatives as long as there's some euphemistic label assuring them that their particular brand of capitalism is humanitarian, just, user-friendly and possessing a social conscience. He'd also see how the working class is always confused with the labour aristocracy and the petty-bourgeoisie when it comes to property, shares etc. Class analysis in Marx's terms leads to the conclusion that history is the history of class struggle, and none of the great revolutionary thinkers and leaders ever subsequently departed from this fundamental axiom as stated in the fanfare opening of the Communist Manifesto. And no one who denies its validity has any claim to be a revolutionary socialist or a Marxist. Henwoodist or Bufordist, yes, but not Marxist. Cheers, Hugh --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Two things at once (NATO *and* Serbian aggression)
Dave B writes in reply to John W in Manchester: In response to John; 1. Dual defensism? Defense against imperialism takes priority. But Kosovars should defend themselves also against any Serb oppression. Right. Note that the Serb regime represents on the one hand an oppressed nation being attacked by imperialism (like Iraq) and on the other an oppressor nation with a clear record of fascist Master Race (in this case Greater Serb) claims over and against other nations. The one doesn't cancel out the other. (Compare under 2, where we can understand what's happening better if we remember the Chinese experience of resisting Japanese imperialism in a united front with the fascist butcher Chiang Kai-Shek -- not a popular front and not a situation where defence against imperialism required ignoring Chiang's butchery within the borders of his nation. It's not too great a strain to realize that the class independence required in China is a clear analogy to the national independence required in regard to Kosova and its need for self-determination. If Chiang (in the present case Milosevic) fails to make the struggle against imperialism his highest priority, the mobilized people should be able to dump him for treason.) We hope that multiethnic militias can stop Serb oppression and unite workers against imperialism. Is this consistent with reality? Well, what else is? The 'reality' of today has been imperialism's revival of old ethnic differences. Only the united working class can overcome these differences in a new 'reality' of socialist federations. This is the weak, because relatively abstract, bit of Dave's argument. He abstracts from the reality of a growing popular mobilization on the part of the Kosovars that is led by a concrete organization, the KLA. He ignores the dynamic development of this group -- forgetting the ubiquity of arms in Albania after the uprising last year, and the pressures on a weak minority leadership of a great influx of young and oppressed men. Maybe the imperialist ties will win out in the absence of an explicit Trotskyist leadership so far, but the sitting KLA leadership fucked up by signing the Rambouillet cop-out which denied self-determination to Kosova and practically ordered the KLA to disarm. This treacherous accord has now been disowned by whoever's leading the KLA now, for the obvious reason that things are developing by the logic of social forces in historical movement, not just the plans laid out in the chancelleries of the imperialist powers. And the social forces in movement in Kosova (and stirring a little in Serbia) are those of first national liberation and second social justice (in terms of consciousness that is, in terms of historical clout the opposite holds -- no national justice without social justice ie workers' democracy to guarantee it). 2. Communist 'rhetoric'. John should know that communists must have a programme for all situations. In this situation it is the anti-imperialist united front. I might be located in NZ but the international tendency I belong to is spread over a number of countries. I agree that communists in oppressor countries have a first duty to mobilise their working class against NATO. But we also have to spell out the ABC's of communist leadership in oppressed countries as well. Otherwise workers will fall into the trap of popular fronts with their bourgeoisies. Exactly. And underlying this is the theory of the Permanent Revolution, in which the working class must realize what social power is latent in democratic demands such as national liberation and make sure they support these demands to the hilt while maintaining class independence and a capacity to construct workers' solutions to the deeper social problems caused by capitalist oppression so that the democratic problems not only get addressed and vindicated, but also find a lasting because non-bourgeois solution. 3. Most of the left is correct in giving unconditional support to Yugoslavia. Those who put conditions on this either by opposing Milosovic or supporting the KLA are offering a helping hand to NATO. The KLA is no limiting factor on the ability of Serbia to defend itself from NATO's aggression. The Serbian forces in Kosova are not defending Kosova or the Kosovars against anything, they're occupying it, violating it and slaughtering the people. If the Milosevic regime was in the least interested in focusing on the battle against NATO imperialism, it would immediately change its policy in Kosova, tell both the Serbs and the Kosovars what all this is really about, arm the Kosovars and offer its help to keep the imperialists out of Kosova. It would also arm the Serbian people and help them democratize the defensive battle against NATO. They would be able to immediately repel a dozen times more effectively any attacks against their factories, bridges, water supplies etc. NATO is already making a shocking balls-up of the propoganda battle as it is. Just imagine how it
M-TH: Re: NATO aircraft losses in Yugoslavia untill 04-20-1999
Forwarding information on NATO losses from a Serbian source. The second website (hosted by Cybercities) referred to has a discussion of the reliability of the reports and details of the aircraft used, and it's done by a Russian. Cheers, Hugh ___ http://www.pancevo.co.yu/agresija/nato_gubici.htm NATO aircraft losses in Yugoslavia - map and data table (04-20-99) DATE LOCATION TYPE OF AIRCRAFT 1. 24.03 mountain Cicavica 2. 24.03 Jastrebac (mountain) German "Tornado" 3. 25.03 Kosovo 25.03 one damaged plane arrived in Sarajevo USAAF F-15 4. 26.03 Cacak 5. 26.03 Cacak 6. 26.03 Pec 7. 27.03 village Budjenovci USAAF F-117 8. 27.03 Cacak 9. 27.03 border of Macedonia 10. 27.03 mountain Zlatibor helicopter with 22 soldiers HH-60 11. 28.03 Majevica (mountain) Bosnia USAAF F-117 12. 28.03 Majevica (mountain) Bosnia helicopter with 12 soldiers HH-53 13. 28.03 Loznica 14. 28.03 Gornji Milanovac 15. 29.03 Pale (Republic of Srpska) 16. 29.03 Podgorica RAF Sea Harrier 17. 29.03 Vranje 18. 30.03 Aleksinac unmanned aircraft 19. 30.03 Sombor 20. 31.03 mountain Tara 21. 31.03 mountain Tara rescue helicopter HH-53 (?) 22. 31.03 mountain Tara rescue helicopter 01.04 one damage arrived in Zagreb USAAF F-117 23. 04.04 Vojvodina 24. 05.04 Kosovska Mitrovica 25. 05.04 Tetovo (Macedonia) helicopter 26. 05.04 Albania helicopter 27. 05.04 mountain Fruska Gora 28. 05.04 south of mountain Fruska Gora rescue helicopter 29. 05.04 south of mountain Fruska Gora rescue helicopter 30. 05.04 Vucitrn (Kosovo) 31. 07.04 Kosovo unmanned aircraft 32. 07.04 Ljig 33. 08.04 near Nis German Tornado, pilot captured 34. 08.04 Kraljevo 35. 10.04 near Nis 36. 10.04 Kosovo 37. 11.04 near Sombor 38. 12.04 near Tuzla airport (Bosna) RAF Sea Harrier, pilot KIA 39. 12.04 German unmanned aircraft 40. 13.04 Batajnica near Belgrade 41.. 13.04 mountain Majevica 42. 13.04 mountain Majevica 43. 13.04 Bela Crkva (Vojvodina) 44. 13.04 Jabuka village near Pancevo 45. 14.04 near Pristina German unmanned aircraft 46. 14.04 Kosovo German unmanned aircraft 47. 15.04 Vojvodina 48. 15.04 Priboj 49. 15.04 mountian Bijelasnica 50. 16.04 Danilovgrad (Montenegro) pilot captured 51. 16.04 coast (Montenegro) 52. 16.04 coast (Montenegro) 16.04 damage NATO aircraft arrived at Skoplje A-10 "Tank killer" 53. 17.04 Prepolje , Milosev do (11.00h) RAF aircraft (probably) 54. 17.04 Urosevac (14.30h) 55. 17.04 Fruska Gora (22.10h) 56. 18.04 Kosovo (16.00h) 57. 18.04 Kosovo (16:00h) 58. 18.04 mountain Cicevica (19:00) 59. 19.04 Macedonia, 2 km from border with Yugoslavia 19.04 damage NATO aircraft arrived at Sarajevo Sea Harrier 60. 20.04 mountain Jastrebac 61. 20.04 mountain Jastrebac rescue helicopter 62. 20.04 Topola, south of Belgrade 63. 20.04 Topola, south of Belgrade Za vise informacija posetite http://www2.cybercities.com/v/venik/aviation/natodown.htm For more information visit http://www2.cybercities.com/v/venik/aviation/natodown.htm --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
M-TH: Re: hitting the nail on the ehad?
Charlie wrote.. I agree with Rob that NATO and the U.S. are the fascist danger in this war. The U.S. neo-colonial empire is built in part of many fascist governments that are fully fascist because of their connection to the reactionary sector or military industrial complex of transnational finance capital. The U.S. military has established or fostered numerous brutal regimes or terrorist gangs around the world for decades - in Korea, Indonesia, Dominican Republic, Chile, Panama, Iraq,, just to name a few. One of its neo-colonial modus operandi is to work through comprador fascisms. The U.S. in the Balkans is Big Daddy of fascisms about to lay another one on them. Me too.. And to talk about a "national question" under present circumstances is just ridiculous. The national question in this case becomes subordinate to the whole war and agression by NATO imperialism.. Another interesting thing is the recent German iniative to create and all European occupation force of Kosovo. So the united facade of imperialism is beginning to split at the seams.. Warm regards Bob Malecki Just pointing out the obvious fact that the terrorism of the imperialists is more fundamental and more serious than the terrorism of Greater Serbian chauvinism is about as useful as pointing out that the sun is bigger than the earth. It's a shocking fact that the ignorance within capitalist society about the way things are is so great that many people still don't realize this -- just as many people in the middle ages still thought the earth was bigger and more important than the sun. But it is also the case that real understanding of what's going on only *starts* with this realization. it doesn't stop there the way Bob, Rob and Charlie appear to want it to (Dave is standing firmly on both sides of the fence on this one). As a Trotskyist I give due weight to the power of unsolved democratic questions (such as the national question and the question of the land) in mobilizing the masses for a liberation struggle against their social oppressors. This is what the theory of Permanent Revolution is all about. It is also about the leadership of this massive social revolution by the most conscious and advanced sectors of society -- the organized, Marxist revolutionary workers. And the leadership can only be DESERVED and WON if it speaks to the NEEDS OF THE MASSES IN STRUGGLE. That means it must have a solution to the problems of the masses and be seen to be fighting and winning on this basis. This is why the Bolshevik slogans in 1917 were, narrowly, ALL POWER TO THE SOVIETS, even though the Bolsheviks for ages were in a minority there, and more broadly, BREAD, PEACE, LAND. We're not going to win the workers and poor peasants/rural workers of Kosova or Serbia to our side if we don't convince them that national and ethnic (ie democratic) rights are fundamental to our programme, and that we have the best prospects of any leadership for bringing home the bacon. That is, that we can do it better than NATO, the rotten chauvinist Milosevic regime or the KLA. This is what the leadership of the Yugoslav revolution succeeded in doing (however inadequately for the longer term) during the struggle for liberation, democratic rights and workers rights leading up to and during the second world war. They turned the masses against the Ustasha fascists, the Chetnik fascists, the Italian fascists and the German Nazis. They also turned them against the treacherous overtures of the British imperialists and the Stalinist Soviet chauvinists. We can do better than them, because we have a better programme, but until we start fighting with the people for the things the people want -- like basic democratic rights -- we'll get nowhere. So Bob can lecture about the need for a vanguard, democratic centralist party as much as he wants, until he can actually show people that it's a useful weapon against their oppressors, both foreign and local, he'll be crying in the wilderness. The national question is becoming *more and more infected and significant* throughout the world today as the process of imperialist recolonization gathers pace with the collaboration of capitulationist bourgeois national governments. As the Balkanization of the former workers states proceeds apace, the national question is further complicated by explosive minority issues. To sweep the national question off the agenda as Bob does is crazy. It must be tackled and solved, not ignored. To turn your back on the Kosova question because Serbia is being bombed by NATO is totally inadequate as a revolutionary response. NATO has no business in Serbia or any other part of the Balkans where it's getting dug in -- like Macedonia, Albania, Dalmatia, Bosnia or Kosova itself. Nor does Serbia have any business in Kosova, even though the Serbian minority there should have every right to their own culture and social identity and full protection against majority abuse. (Even the whites in South Africa or the
M-TH: Re: Swedish fascism
Charles B (in the article he forwarded) and James F (in his remarks on the reactionary bourgeois cultural icon Ingmar Bergman) highlight the strong streak of right-wing reaction in Sweden. I'd like to comment on some of the statements in the article from the Internet Anti-Fascist/LA Times that Charles posted. A HATE CRIME THE SWEDES COULDN'T IGNORE: KILLING OF CLERK WHO PROTESTED NEO-NAZIS SEEN AS WARNING CALL THAT ANYBODY COULD BE TARGET It wasn't a hate crime so much as a political crime against a left-wing anti-fascist. STOCKHOLM--No one here took much notice of the hundreds of hate crimes against immigrants over the last few years that besmirched the image of Sweden as a bastion of tolerance and serenity. Most people have tended to interpret them as emotional, psychological aberrations -- hate crimes -- and not political crimes. As for Sweden's *image* of tolerance and serenity, that's just what it has been, an image. And one that's been polished and maintained by outsiders more than by Swedes themselves -- the welfare paradise of the third way, a reformist utopia has been needed as a copout from the revolutionary socialist transformation of capitalist society. Hence the bleating by Havel in Prague and others about the Swedish model -- a model that was already dead and being buried when the Stalinist regime collapsed in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and the lack of a revolutionary working-class leadership allowed the workers states to be hijacked by capitalist restoration. Nor did many here rise up in anger over the execution-style slayings of two police officers who foiled a bank robbery by neo-Nazis in May, or the car bombing a month later that seriously wounded an investigative reporter who had been documenting this country's white supremacist movement. "Rise up" gives the wrong impression. There is too much sympathy for the police in Sweden as it is. Not on the left, but in public opinion. But the bombing of the reporter made a lot of people very angry -- especially at the off-handed attitude of the police in easing off protective measures in relation to the threats against the reporter. But when a mild-mannered warehouse clerk was gunned down in his Stockholm apartment last month after protesting the election of an avowed neo-Nazi to the board of his trade union, Swedes got the message that any open-minded person could be an enemy or a victim of racist radicals. Bjoern was not so much mild-mannered as likeable, radical and determined. (I've got a picture of him carrying a banner I can send as an attachment to anyone interested.) The message was not that "any open-minded person" could be targeted but that any determined unionist who took a stand against the Nazis could be targeted. "Bjoern wasn't an anti-Nazi crusader. He was just an average guy who did what any decent person would have done, which is to stand up and confront something that is wrong," said Anna-Clara Bratt, editor of the Arbetaren labor journal. "Almost 90% of Swedish workers are trade union members, so his murder served as a warning call that anyone could be next." He wasn't an average guy, he was a syndicalist union organizer, a local workers leader. The argument that he did something "any decent person would have done" is neither here nor there -- actions of this kind are rarely spontaneous expressions of moral fibre. The high level of union organization is important here, though. But the threat is not to ordinary union members -- yet. It's to organizers and people who take the initiative to speak up for their fellow-workers. And Arbetaren is not a labour journal. It's an anarcho-syndicalist paper with a heavy cultural slant. The fact that "arbetaren" means "the worker" is misleading. Before Soederberg's slaying, Bratt said, Swedes tended to avert their eyes from the ugly assaults and harassment of immigrants and refugees, who now make up as many as 1 million of Sweden's 8.9 million residents. "Swedes" were just as divided in their response after the killing as before it. There is a groundswell of support for immigrants and radicals among ordinary people in Sweden that rarely makes the headlines, as Bob M can testify and often has, as opposed to the louder and more visible anti-immigrant, anti-radical lobby. Since 1995, there have been at least four slayings of foreigners attributed to neo-Nazis, and police have investigated hundreds of racially motivated attacks each year, said Margareta Lindroth, deputy director of Sweden's SAPO security forces. The only interest the secret police have in this is to use the Nazi threat as an excuse to home in on the socialist left under the cover of vague "anti-democratic" charges. Of course, certain of the Social-Democrats want the secret police to stop the Nazis targeting them, but hey, no pain, no gain. Sociologists and historians attribute the recent surge in neo-Nazi violence to desperation among a small but powerful minority that has come to
