Date: Sun, 02 Feb 1997 16:20:41 +0000
From: MA Jones <majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>
Subject: M-I: Nato ungarbled and ungarbed


Dear List

I repeat my earlier posting and if there are complaints that this is my
fourth post today, please direct them to Netcom UK whose servers are
shit useless.

The heated debate about Nato which has been taking place inside 
Western political establishments becomes more and more revealing. 
Probably most of us on this list have accepted to a greater or lesser 
degree the notion put forward by Trotsky and others that Stalinist 
Russia was articulated in contradictory ways into the world capitalist 
system, or that (as I would prefer to think) the dynamics of capital 
accumulation since the war have depended upon the USSR as a 
guarantor of its existence  (USSR as one of the conditions of 
existence of capitalism on a world scale which postwar capitalism 
was unable to secure for itself but needed anyway, analogous to the 
role of the state within a particualr country as guarantor of the 
conditions of existence of a national capitalism -- don't all rush to 
your keyboards -- I'm not making a Hegelian meal of this). 

Whichever way you look at it, there was more to peaceful coexistence 
than met the eye. I think of it this way: capitalism is radically
parasitic -- it consumes labour -- and in this century its 
parasitism developed new forms. If in the nineteenth century it 
depended upon trade unions to help organise the w/c, provide markets 
for consumer goods, and guarantee the continued reproduction of the w/c 
as a class, in the 20th the expanded reproduction of its contradictions 
and the emergence of the w/c onto the international domain changed the 
requirement. In 1917 capitalism faced a historicalMessage-ID: <32F4BED9.6AFA-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>
Date: Sun, 02 Feb 1997 16:20:41 +0000
From: MA Jones <majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>
Reply-To: majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk
X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win16; I)
To: marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
Subject: Nato ungarbled and ungarbed

Dear List

I repeat my earlier posting and if there are complaints that this is my
fourth post today, please direct them to Netcom UK whose servers are
shit useless.

The heated debate about Nato which has been taking place inside 
Western political establishments becomes more and more revealing. 
Probably most of us on this list have accepted to a greater or lesser 
degree the notion put forward by Trotsky and others that Stalinist 
Russia was articulated in contradictory ways into the world capitalist 
system, or that (as I would prefer to think) the dynamics of capital 
accumulation since the war have depended upon the USSR as a 
guarantor of its existence  (USSR as one of the conditions of 
existence of capitalism on a world scale which postwar capitalism 
was unable to secure for itself but needed anyway, analogous to the 
role of the state within a particualr country as guarantor of the 
conditions of existence of a national capitalism -- don't all rush to 
your keyboards -- I'm not making a Hegelian meal of this). 

Whichever way you look at it, there was more to peaceful coexistence 
than met the eye. I think of it this way: capitalism is radically
parasitic -- it consumes labour -- and in this century its 
parasitism developed new forms. If in the nineteenth century it 
depended upon trade unions to help organise the w/c, provide markets 
for consumer goods, and guarantee the continued reproduction of the w/c 
as a class, in the 20th the expanded reproduction of its contradictions 
and the emergence of the w/c onto the international domain changed the 
requirement. In 1917 capitalism faced a historical relevance of the Theory of Combined 
and Unequal Development. Its relevance to the fate of Nato is 
extremely clear.

Ira Strauss's astonishing (to my mind) piece in JRL is the more 
remarkable considering who Ira Strauss is and his leading role within 
the inner cabals of Nato-debaters.
He says (I paraphrase) that the outcome of the Nato debate will 
determine the fate of capitalism in the next century -- whether there 
will be some kind of Kautskyian ultra-imperialism, of perhpas 
benevolent intent, or whether we are heading for the kind of 
uncontrolled Final Crisis foreshadowed in Lenin's Imperialism.

We really need now to get a handle on the economics of all this: the 
costs of expanding, not expanding -- the role of deflationary chronic 
crisis in Europe and the effects of that becoming a sharp depression, 
on European stability; the threat to the German w/c of competition 
with Polish labour; etc. There are some heavy-hiters on this list who 
might know some of the answers (I don't). 

Ira Strauss's piece is about 40k. To avoid overburdening this List's 
seemingly constipated server I am putting it as a zipfile on the 
website below. I shall try to download more selections from this 
ongoing debate.

Zipfile: Nato1.zip



-- 
Regards,
Mark Jones
majones-AT-netcomuk.co.uk
http://www.netcomuk.co.uk/~majones/index.htm



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