Re: [Marxism] Marx’s law of value: a debate between David Harvey and Michael Roberts | Michael Roberts Blog
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Comrades, hi, There's another frustrating input in the Smith-Harvey debate over at the Review of African Political Economy website: "Dissolving Empire: David Harvey, John Smith, and the Migrant" http://roape.net/2018/04/10/dissolving-empire-david-harvey-john-smith-and-the-migrant/ "Does this mean that China in economic, cultural, social, or military terms has reached the status of an imperialist power?," asks Adam Mayer, who studies Marxism in Nigeria. Wrong question, hence wrong formulation of the terrain of debate, and wrong answer... I think the question should be, instead, "aren't China and other BRICS countries slotting into global imperialism as *subimperial* allies, in relation to the accumulation of capital, the super-exploitation of labour, species-threatening ecological destruction and global malgovernance?" The answer is "Yes!" And there, in the next post, I argue, the problem is immense. (My post ended up drawling on for 8300 words so if anyone wants it, let me know. It'll be online next Monday.) On 2018/04/02 09:26 PM, Patrick Bond via Marxism wrote: On 2018/04/02 07:32 PM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism wrote: One particularly scary aspect of Harvey's argument is, as the quote below shows, that he believes there needs to be different theories and therefore different strategies for different sectors and movements. Or if not that, then, at least implicitly, an insistence on no coherent theory. This is particularly upsetting given the valiant efforts of some theorists and activists to unite theoretically production with social reproduction and thus with struggles against oppression linked in a coherent way with the struggle against exploitation. I'm very biased, yeah, but really Andy, it's the opposite: his latest circulation model (more so than his 1985 three-circuits-of-capital) is a coherent, holistic approach to capitalism that builds in social reproduction (especially gendered roles) and ecological 'free gifts of nature' in a way that's ordinarily left out from Marxist theorizing. Have a look at that .docx file or check the diagram out directly at http://davidharvey.org/ In the same way as you, I think comrade Michael is doing a disservice here, with his primitive either/or formulation (because obviously class struggle is waged and 'decided' in production, realisation and distribution circuitries, all the time): "I conclude from DH’s short paper that he aims to establish an argument that class struggle is no longer centred or decided between labour and capital at the point of production of surplus value. Instead in ‘modern’ capitalism, it is to be found in other places in his ‘circuit of capital’ that he presents in latest book and in various presentations globally. For DH, it is in the point of realisation (ie over rents, mortgages, price gouging by pharma firms etc) or in distribution (over taxes, public services etc) that the ‘hotspots’’ of class struggle are now centred. The class struggle in production is now less important (even non-existent)." Cracks like those last five words are distractions. But likewise, I don't think David was particularly fair to Michael in this remark - "Devaluation rarely appears in Roberts’ accounts" - because after all, the blog is entitled "The next recession" and Michael regularly makes his predictions about how crises will play out in the context of his (rather monological) falling-rate-of-profit causality. But David's absolutely right to call on all Marxists to pay more attention to the way this vast batch of overaccumulated capital that regrouped in untenable ways since 2008 is going to come crashing down: "we would need to construct a strong theory of devaluation to account for what happens in the market place." (Occupy movement strategists worked a rather esoteric theory up to the level of public consciousness, but it took three years after the major crisis inflection point. We surely have to do better, and do it faster, in response to the next melt?) Anyhow, there is a bit too much of this kind of simplification going on. Later this week I'll have a comment posted at the Review of African Political Economy website where the Smith-Harvey debate on how to characterize imperialism has been raging; it too would be improved (in my view) by more generosity between leading intellectual comrades. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx’s law of value: a debate between David Harvey and Michael Roberts | Michael Roberts Blog
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I can't see any of the files either. Can someone repost the doc file? _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx’s law of value: a debate between David Harvey and Michael Roberts | Michael Roberts Blog
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * Further on the question of other sectors and movements and which theory (or multiple, noncompeting theories) best meets their needs. Right now Kentucky teachers are on strike, and their foremost demand is around pensions. I don't know how DH would fit this into his schema. But take a look at the chapter on pensions by Sarap Saritas Oran in the essential book cited by DH: Bhattacharya, T., "Social Reproduction Theory." Oran's article is one sustained and thorough argument for the centrality of the value of labor power and how battles over pensions go on between capital, its state and the working class to shape and reshape social reproduction -- and are therefore battles over labor power's value and its allocation. Most interestingly in her conclusion she points to finance capital's need to redirect the surplus to the sphere of production and thus divorce it from social reproduction. I would argue that Oran's position fits squarely in the midst of Michael Roberts' framework. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx’s law of value: a debate between David Harvey and Michael Roberts | Michael Roberts Blog
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * I don't see the docx file > >> _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx’s law of value: a debate between David Harvey and Michael Roberts | Michael Roberts Blog
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * On 2018/04/02 07:32 PM, Andrew Pollack via Marxism wrote: One particularly scary aspect of Harvey's argument is, as the quote below shows, that he believes there needs to be different theories and therefore different strategies for different sectors and movements. Or if not that, then, at least implicitly, an insistence on no coherent theory. This is particularly upsetting given the valiant efforts of some theorists and activists to unite theoretically production with social reproduction and thus with struggles against oppression linked in a coherent way with the struggle against exploitation. I'm very biased, yeah, but really Andy, it's the opposite: his latest circulation model (more so than his 1985 three-circuits-of-capital) is a coherent, holistic approach to capitalism that builds in social reproduction (especially gendered roles) and ecological 'free gifts of nature' in a way that's ordinarily left out from Marxist theorizing. Have a look at that .docx file or check the diagram out directly at http://davidharvey.org/ In the same way as you, I think comrade Michael is doing a disservice here, with his primitive either/or formulation (because obviously class struggle is waged and 'decided' in production, realisation and distribution circuitries, all the time): "I conclude from DH’s short paper that he aims to establish an argument that class struggle is no longer centred or decided between labour and capital at the point of production of surplus value. Instead in ‘modern’ capitalism, it is to be found in other places in his ‘circuit of capital’ that he presents in latest book and in various presentations globally. For DH, it is in the point of realisation (ie over rents, mortgages, price gouging by pharma firms etc) or in distribution (over taxes, public services etc) that the ‘hotspots’’ of class struggle are now centred. The class struggle in production is now less important (even non-existent)." Cracks like those last five words are distractions. But likewise, I don't think David was particularly fair to Michael in this remark - "Devaluation rarely appears in Roberts’ accounts" - because after all, the blog is entitled "The next recession" and Michael regularly makes his predictions about how crises will play out in the context of his (rather monological) falling-rate-of-profit causality. But David's absolutely right to call on all Marxists to pay more attention to the way this vast batch of overaccumulated capital that regrouped in untenable ways since 2008 is going to come crashing down: "we would need to construct a strong theory of devaluation to account for what happens in the market place." (Occupy movement strategists worked a rather esoteric theory up to the level of public consciousness, but it took three years after the major crisis inflection point. We surely have to do better, and do it faster, in response to the next melt?) Anyhow, there is a bit too much of this kind of simplification going on. Later this week I'll have a comment posted at the Review of African Political Economy website where the Smith-Harvey debate on how to characterize imperialism has been raging; it too would be improved (in my view) by more generosity between leading intellectual comrades. _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
Re: [Marxism] Marx’s law of value: a debate between David Harvey and Michael Roberts | Michael Roberts Blog
POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. * One particularly scary aspect of Harvey's argument is, as the quote below shows, that he believes there needs to be different theories and therefore different strategies for different sectors and movements. Or if not that, then, at least implicitly, an insistence on no coherent theory. This is particularly upsetting given the valiant efforts of some theorists and activists to unite theoretically production with social reproduction and thus with struggles against oppression linked in a coherent way with the struggle against exploitation. These efforts unfortunately but predictably face forms of of intersectionality which would be all too happy to ignore the overall dynamic of the system. "My [DH's] objection to any exclusionary productivist interpretation (to cite a matching pejorative characterization!) is that it casts to one side the whole history of creation of wants, needs and desires (let alone the mechanics of ensuring an ability to pay) in the history of capital accumulation. I think we should pay much more attention to this aspect of things. This does not mean I downplay, deny or refute all the work that has been done on the labour process and the importance of the class struggles that have occurred and continue to occur in the sphere of production. But these struggles have to be put in relation to struggles over realization, distribution (e.g. rental extractions, debt foreclosures), social reproduction, the management of the metabolic relation to nature and the free gifts of culture and nature. These have all figured large in recent anti-capitalist movements and I insist that we take them all seriously along with the more traditional focus on the Marxist left favoring class struggle at the point of production as the key moment for struggle. This is why I think the diagram I offer of circulation and the definition of capital as value in motion is so important. Strange to have it all dismissed in the citation from Murray Smith as 'c*ircular reasoning*!'" _ Full posting guidelines at: http://www.marxmail.org/sub.htm Set your options at: http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
