From: "Greg Schofield" <g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au>
Subject: Re: AUT: Pragmatism, Purism & the Peso
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 11:35:46 +0800


Paul I like very much you post below, which I think strikes the nail on the head as far as the left is concerned.

I don't pretend to know much of the situation in Argentina, so what I say this must be borne in mind.

Runaway inflation immediately effects the lower end of society in a crushing way, I have no-dea how a currency can be stablisied, but I would assume that any solution which did not deal with the problem face on would be pissing in the wind.

However, currency stablization would be just one of a number of related problems, so it is not just a matter of reducing things to this or that isolated problem. In essence however, you have to put forward a way of resolving the major social/political/economic problems as they have manifested themselves - the very opposite to presenting an absolute abstract resolution. The fact remains that if the working class siezed control tomorrow they would have to face the very real problems that were created by the bourgeoisie, magical solutions will not feed the kids in the morning and to this extent things have to be taken as they are and not how we would have them be.

The revolutionary aspect comes from who is imposing the solutions for whose benefit. Oddly the same solutions in the main would probably be ones that the bourgeoisie might implement but are unwilling or unable to do so because of their class and sectional interests. It is not the reforms themselves, which  must be sensible, realizable and capable of resolving the immediate problems (ie within the society as presently given), the real struggle is about power itself.

I will be jumped on for saying this, but the classic example of such an approach is Lenin's April Thesis. The thesis is mostly an analysis of the Russian condition as it appeared in 1917. However, the part that always gets ignored is the immediate solutions Lenin puts forward - these are for the most part just sensible resolutions - immediate peace, redistribution of land to increase food production and satisfy a much over exploited peasantry, nationalisation of the banks etc. Not one of them was beyond the bourgeoisie in Russia implementing in its own interest in order to resolve the social crisis that was engulfing Russia, but the ruling class was incapable to doing so, sectional interests dominated and pepetuated the crisis (the crisis was slow burning there was plenty of opportunities to do something before they reached the point they did in April 1917).

On this list it is pointless to go into what did and did not stem from the publication of the thesis, but what is undeniable is that the thesis galvenisied working class activists, militant soldiers, and much of the discontented peasantry that they should push to resolve the problems as the ruling class would not, could not, do so. The thesis did two things. One it painted a clear picture of the origin of the immediate problem and two it supplied a list of simple, straightforward ways to resolve the problem without recourse to any schemes, utopian or otherwise. These two things combined articulated what millions of people were already thinking, it gave words and form to these contradictions and in effect directed them to a unified acknowledgement of what should be done (very different from imposing solutions this was simply a case of distilling, concretising and articulating the solutions which were already being considered across society).

Interestingly Kerensky could have solved the whole situation (remembering that he had gained power from the Tsar but a few months previously) by instituting these reforms and defusing mass discontent. His government, however, was quite unprepared to bite the bullet, in this Lenin got his analysis dead right.

It is not my place to suggest anything so concrete to Argentina where the left is no doubt involved in a titanic struggle, but in essence what is being suggested above is a general strategy which has much to recomend it. The revolution does not exist in the particular reforms and changes it institutes or does not institute, it consists of the exertion of power over society by the under classes. In this exertion no-doubt these classes will invent much and though making some reforms which the bourgeoisie might of well have made it woold not be done in a bourgeois manner or in fact, in the end, be anything like they were capable of realising.

So yes rather then putting forward some scheme of a moneyless society, or of grandiose solutions to remodel society, the way forward lies, to my mind, in dealing with the problems as they have manifested themselves, one part of which is without doubt the stablisation of the currency in the case of Argentina.


--- Message Received ---
From: Paul Bowman <paulbowman-AT-totalise.co.uk>
To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2002 01:09:21 -0000
Subject: AUT: Pragmatism, Purism & the Peso

If bourgeois rule in argentina is swept away what is to be done about the
peso? Should measures be taken to stop its fall in value or should it be
abandoned?

If the way forward must necessarily pass through a phase of "lower phase
communism" wherein the form of bourgeois value exchange is retained (within
the context of "socialisation of the means of production" and "proletarian
dictatorship") as Marx said in the Gothakritik. Then surely all measures
necessary must be taken to stabilise the value of the peso?

If this vista is unappealing, then can we avoid the problems of immediately
constructing a post-monetary regime of production and distribution or must
we, in contrast, confront the "purist" and "intellectual" problems of how to
create an immediately communist society (without intervening transitional
phase)?

Are these questions abstract or are they fundamental ones confronting the
Argentianian working class people right now?


Greg Schofield
Perth Australia
g_schofield-AT-dingoblue.net.au
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