Date: Fri, 14 Mar 1997 13:06:16 -0500 (EST)
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: Re: M-I: Application to Reality?


Justin:

>
> The arms races preceding both wars are classic
>examples of prisoner's dilemmas, the wars being the suboptimal ouitcomes
>of the individually rational action of the nation states as actors. The
>cold war was the central territory for game theory and, as Barklay
>remarked, the main occasion for its development.


Louis: This is not a Marxist analysis of the cold war. A Marxist analysis of
the cold war would start with class relations. The United States launched
the cold war because it wanted to preserve capitalist property relations in
Europe and the third world which was undergoing powerful revolutionary
uprisings. The USSR tried as best as it could to preserve the
class-collaborationist relationship it had with FDR, but the Anglo-American
ruling class had a new agenda. The best places to go to understand the cold
war are Zinn, Kolko, and the "revisionist" historians. Game theory does not
address the key concerns, and those are who started the cold war and why.

 The difficulties ina ny
>social movement, including the new feminist movement, in getting
>cooperation are classic examples of game theoritic problems. 

Louis: Bald assertions like this are absolutely worthless. We are not
interested in statements to this effect. We need to understand the class
dynamics of the feminist movement. You should take the trouble to provide
such an understanding, or else drop the whole subject.



The collapse
>of the USSR and in particular its dissolution is a classic illustration of
>the PD: unity was the best outcome, but required cooperation; the
>individually rational motivation of the leaders of the Republics
>(basically to be big fish in small ponds) drove the psotcommunist system
>into disunity. Louis is unlikely himself to investogate this, but a main
>attarction of rational choice theory is the explanatory power with regard
>toa  wide range of real world phenomena.

Louis: More nonsense. "The individually rational motivation" of the
republics did not cause the collapse of the USSR. It was instead the
combination of trying to build socialist property relations on a peasant
economy, imperialist pressure through the arms race, fascist invasion and
bureaucratic dictatorship. For Marxist explanations of the collapse of the
USSR, I refer list members to Moshe Lewin's excellent "Russia-USSR-Russia".

>
>It's true that the level of explanation is rather abstract, and Louis
>objects to this, He'd rather discuss Albania or whatever. These are
>important topics and I do not denigrate the need to understand them.
>Lately, though, I personally have been inhibited in my ability to follow
>what's going on in more detail than I can get from the Nation and the
>Economist. 

Louis: Your problem is not lack of time, it is lack of motivation. Louis
Godena has 13 children by 3 former marriages--or something like that--and
works 50 hours a week as a millwright. This does not stop him from steeping
himself in the "definite relations" of class society. You are more
comfortable in abstractions. You chose philosophy as a career out of your
love of abstraction. When you radicalized, you tried to find a way to wed
your love of abstraction with your Marxist convictions. The answer was
Analytical Marxism.


I'm in a demanding law school program and am a parent, So, I
>don't talk about what I don't know. I don't know why Louis feels obliged
>to personalize everything. I don't spend a lot of my limiteda ir time
>calling him an irrelevant jerk, a sellout, etc. I remind Louis that with
>regard to his own sort of interests in practical politics I have spent a
>fair amount of time discussing something I do know something about, namely
>the USSR and Russia. If I have a tendency to atlk theory, well, that's my
>background and training. If Louis finds it boring, why does he talk so
>much about it? I ignore discussions I find boring myself.


Louis: You never discuss the USSR except in abstract terms. You frame the
whole discussion in terms of the Hayekian problematic. One doesn't need
Marxism to approach things in these terms. The libertarians are highly
polished at it. What would be interesting is if you provided some new detail
about *how* the process of bureaucratic mismanagement in the USSR took
place. I attempted to do this when I wrote about the martyrdom of the
engineer Palchinsky, who was devoted to the intelligent use of planning and
technology. When he got in the way of the effort to dump the planned economy
and use diktat instead, he was murdered. The differences between Bukharin
and Stalin on these sorts of questions are very illuminating. This is what
study of the USSR must be about, not how to create an "entrepreneurial"
framework.



>
>I agree with Louis that AM was largely a professor's response to
>professional demands for prevailing standards of rigor and clarity. I
>guess I don't see anything wrong with that. I think the standards are good
>and professors are the peoiple with the time do the work to master them. I
>also agree with Louis that AM is a lot less vital than it was five or so
>years ago. It may have run out of steam; we will see. But there's nothing
>special about it in that regard; Marxism is in trouble all over,
>practically and intellectually. It's not as if there is another vitala nd
>flourishing school of Marxist thought against which we could counterpose
>AM.  AM for all its limitations and problems sis till the best we have in
>terms of living Marxist theory today, at least in the English speaking world.


Louis: AM is minor stuff compared to the efforts of the classical Marxists
grouped around Socialist Register, Capitalism, Nature and Society, and
Monthly Review. I can name ten individuals who are blazing new ground in
both theory and concrete investigations who have no ties to AM: Carlos
Vilas, Ellen Wood, David Harvey, James O'Connor, Leo Panitch, John Bellamy
Foster, Mike Davis, George Cominel, Boris Kargalitsky, Perry Anderson. None
of them feel the need to replace Marxism with some half-cocked mix of Marx
and game theory. The results they produce with the classical approach are
powerful. Mike Davis's "City of Quartz" is the sort of thing that Marxists
should be producing, not arcane replies to John Rawls. 

>
>I also agree with Louis that the division of labor in AM between high
>theory and more immediately practical concerns is regrettable. Roemer at
>least has done some work on things like the economics of racism and Wright
>on class conflict in real world situations; Przeworski is most successful
>at mixing the concerns, at least of the big names. But then a lot of
>people who do practical analysis don't bother themselves at all about high
>theory. I think that's a weakness too.  
>

Louis: Okay. I may just be provoked to have a look at Wright and Przeworski
at this point. Although I would prefer an enema with sulfuric acid instead.


>It's not me, but you, who said that popularization, ora nalysod of
>contemporary politics, not the same thing, is less worthy and serious and
>high theory. I don't think that at all. I think that contemporary
>political analysis is necessary and popularlization is absolutely
>essential. I do a certain amount of it in the pages of Against the Current
>myself. I don't think less of anyone who does it; indeed, I rely very
>heavily on such work myself. It's my access to the world. It mystifies me
>why Louis thinks that is the only proper activity for Marxists. After all,
>if Marx had confined himself to journalistic studies of the Crimean War,
>the Opium War, etc., he would not be remembereda s the founder of Marxism.
>What secures his place in history is Capital, a work of high theory. Maybe
>Louis thinks that Marx settled all the important high theoretical
>questions and our only task is to apply his insights. Well, I disagree.


Louis: I reject the idea that Marx was doing "journalistic studies". What he
was doing was applying Marxism. My beef with Roemer, Cohen and Elster is
that they never apply their theory. My beef with you is that you only come
alive on this list when you get a chance to "theorize". The minute you stray
>from pure theory into history, the results are often highly problematic such
as your understanding of how fascism took power. This surely is a symptom of
relying on a "theory" that is highly disarticulated from reality. Classical
Marxism had no problem in this respect. Trotsky's analysis of fascism was a
real achievement. What would Analytical Marxist approach to this question
amount to? That the German workers voted democratically (and rationally?)
for Hitler, as you asserted until brute facts woke you up?






Louis Proyect
(www.columbia.edu/~lnp3)



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