File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-10-28.110, message 35


Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 23:45:58 +1000
From: rws-AT-comserver.canberra.edu.au (Rob Schaap)
Subject: M-I: Re: Beneath the surface ...


A scribble before bed.

I've never heard of James O'Connor (thanks Louis), but his 2nd
contradiction thesis is interesting.  A decade of contractionary budgets
must strike at the reliability and capacity of the infrastructure (human
and otherwise).  Privatisation, to my mind, makes more direct capital's
relationship with the infrastructure.  I'm no business economist, but
obviously capital has decided its power over prices (in the new 'user pays'
world) is enough to compensate for the money it saved by getting taxpayers
to fund education and utilities.  Everyday experience leads me to suspect
this is short-term thinking (but then there are annual reports to be
submitted to stock holders).  They've folgged water and electricity in the
state of Victoria, and there's already evidence of infrastructural decline.
 Similarly, my job gives me daily cause for suspicion that education is not
benefitting from its budget cuts.  A deliberate attempt to create a
wage-controlling/inflation-controlling lumpen-proletariat?

Adam comments on Zeynep's ideas are relevant here, but I would add that
transnational capital has plenty of options, and apparently needs only to
hint at a possible relocation to cop a lump of taxpayers' money and a few
less irksome regulations.  BTW, A local Green Left paper argues for the
need for income tax hikes on the grounds that capital will simply leave if
corporate tax goes up (and if it doesn't, I guess it passes on the extra to
the punters).  Its theme is, 'spread the unfairness' among the workers.  I
think a bit of arithmetic would be handy - surely relocation costs are a
significant factor?  Anyway, there's a popular/accessible line of
socialist-leaning rhetoric just waiting to be used if and when a government
is forced to such a regime (I should add Aussie doesn't have a value added
tax yet). 

And lastly, Adam argues that residual cultural components can be
appropriated or excised by capitalism.  And so they can.  But remember,
while they're about, residuals are interacting with the rest of the
superstructure.  In the US, religion plus communication technology equals,
to my mind, an obscene affirmation/exploitation of capitalism (Bakker,
Humbard et al) - yet in Egypt, religion plus communication technologies
equals, I'm given to believe, an unprecedented spread of Islam (cassettes
taking the faith beyond the physical reach of the mosque). 
Communitarianism has so many variants because residual culture is being
appropriated by the religious right in Alabama, the 'decent' among old
'noblesse oblige' Tories in the Home Counties, the filial in (I'm guessing)
Anatolia, and so on.  Some such incidental compounds benefit the order, and
some are downright counter-hegemonic.  As I read him, that's why Williams
denied the logical possibility of complete hegemony.

Good night, Rob.







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