Re: M-TH: Re:LOV, butterflies and babies
Hello Simon, When you write: that imperialism is (arguably) the current international capitalist relationship does not mean that our definition of capitalism is somehow inadequate What is the relationship between the two part of the sentance as they do not seem to logicall follow. Surely a definition of capitalism which does not take into account it curent international relationship is inadequate. While I may share the fear about those who seek to 'update' Marxism it is equally wrong to have the view that every part of his economic theory is unaltered by the continuous developments within capitalism. His own positions changed within his life-time and if you count Engels as a Marxist (which perhaps you don't) then clearly by the 1880s thing had changed a lot. Marx may have said much more if he had lived to write volume six of Captial but the task was left to others. And it continues constantly. I am saying that there is nothing magical about the universe giving agency to it, consciously or unconsciously. No one is arguing that the universe chooses to be dialectical no more than gravity chooses to put things onto the floor. I am showing then that a dialectical WAY of seeing the world, thus acting on the world, and thus changing it over time, is supported by such a materialist position. From this do you think that dialectics is confined to social relations or to nature. Or just WAY merely apply to an appearence of dialectics in nature. Do you disagree with Engels (and possibly Marx) or do you think that blind devotion to his theory is the problem? Sorry have to go stop there but I will pick up on a few other things from that post if it is not too annoying! Regards, John --- from list [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---
Re: M-TH: Re:LOV, butterflies and babies
Simon,
I was fascinated to read your comment:
Please, not imperialism. Capitalism.
Well, I had no idea that there were socialists of any sort who
actually opposed the word Imperialism entirely. It is hardly a
Leninist term as the the nice Mr. Hobson was a staunch Liberal.
Unless you are accusing Lenin of being a Liberal (perhaps the logic
could be taken as far as labelling Good old Uncle Joe as that great
Liberal leader Stalin ! !!). There are also many Trotskist who use
the term some like Workers Power openly and many other just throw it
in from time to time, though preferring late capitalism or monopoly
capitalism. Does the SPGB actually believe capitalism has changed at
all since Marx Engels were writing or your Party came into being
(which I think was just before Hobson wrote his book).
More seriously though your definition of socialist revolution in this
post and the litany of metaphors did rather confuse me. Especially
when you said
social revolution is the production of a new historical form
dictated by the physical nature of the entity - in this case, the structure
of the brain
Not by the body?
Most socially revolutions have been very bodily affairs. Unless by
brain you would include head-butting police officers.
This is, I would argue, the basis for
"dialectics": there is nothing dialectical about the universe, but there is
about us.
So there is no convincing you of the merits of Dialectical
Materialism or the arguments of Engels? Also if there is nothing
dialectical about the universe but there is about us does it follow
that we are not part of the universe (or is that problem solved
dialectically too).On this subject, scientifically how would you
explain locomotion?
We don't pull an idea out of the hat: we *recreate* it in
ourselves and in our organization
Unless your polyphony of metaphors is just clouding my understanding,
isn't this just Hegelianism - pure and simple?
The working class IS the socialism... socialism is the sum total of
our human relations
You complain about people using the term Imperialism (which at least
we all know what is meant by it nowadays) but what on earth do YOU
mean by socialism.
Do you mean by socialism what Marx and Engels went out of there way
to define as communism? Or do you mean any form of socialism from
utopian socialism to national socialism to market socialism to soviet
style socialism to Fabian socialism to democratic socialism to all
the other brands of socialism? I don't want to sound rude but I
really have no idea what you mean by it?
Finally on the quote above, Surely any society is the sum total of
our human relations. Capitalism is the sum total of the certain
class-based human relations existing at at a certain historical
stage. As you said back in the beginning of you post if i understand
correctly; humanist is the substance of these various forms.
Oh well I don't seem to be agreeing with much you are saying now
perhaps we should go back to discussing the family.
Regards,
John
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).
Whoa there. What I am saying is that change is due to the material logic of
human existence, and not your ahistorical idea of an outside agency acting
on it, which is religion whether that agency is the angelic host or the
heroic vanguard. And on value, well, we've been over this. You are talking
about suspending the PRICE mechanism. 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. 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: whether this is determined by the
market or by the commissar doesn't matter, 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?
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).
Now you're really fantasising. You're trying to put words in my mouth which
I never said. Red card for you. It also is completely the opposite of my
position. I am arguing that members of the working class can have the
revolution themselves, rather than have
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] ---
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
