File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/97-04-13.095, message 76


Date: Sat, 12 Apr 97 4:45:01 EDT
From: boddhisatva <kbevans-AT-panix.com>
Subject: Re: M-I: SPGB and abolishing money






		Lew,



	As I say, I did hit upon the idea for utopian, egalitarian,
distribution, but I rejected it as incomplete, and many years ago.  


	When you wrote:

"If I could demonstrate a rational substitute for money there would be no
point in getting rid of money in the first place, dialectically or
otherwise. You seem to have taken on board too much bourgeois economics
and its assumptions."
 
- it was a dodge of the lowest order, but look, I'm happy if you're happy. 
I mean, I don't want to make you sound like a criminal for having a very
lofty goal in life.  I just believe that if you can't deal with the
dialectical logic that created capitalism, you can't be an effective
Marxist.


	If you can't understand that "primitive accumulation" occurred
under the most brutal and arbitrary conditions of feudal rule (thus sowing
the seeds for its own defeat), fine, accept the Ayn Rand view that
successful capitalists are the master race.  If you want to believe that
the market is inefficient when compared to planned economies, go ahead,
maybe technology will someday catch up with your hopes, and we can all
rest easy in the bosom of Big Brother. If you see no practical purposes
for prices, that's fine, although frankly I hope that you won't be the guy
programming the Big Computer.  However, if you want to call these vague,
but entirely laudable and strictly compassionate, hopes Marxism because
you found some equally vague text in Marx, I think you have to be
challenged.  This is not even because you may be wrong about Marx, you
very well may not be, or because you are at all destructive or mean to be,
but because your attitudes are akin to a corrosive substitution of desire
for logic in Marxist politics. 


	
	I feel that the collapse of Marxist-inspired centralism in Europe
means that we have to take a sober view of why Marxism has been an
intellectual triumph and a complete practical failure in our century.  I
feel that we have to accept where we are, and turn our attention towards a
very concrete, very Marxist, very dialectical theory of what a transition
to socialism requires.  I just do not believe that communal hopes and
revolutionary aspirations can be trusted to do the job again.  We must
look at each aspect of society - as the list is now doing with nationalism
-, decipher its dialectical path, and why capitalism distorts it or holds
it back.  Then we must imagine what forms those forces will take in
transition.  Then we must create broad principles of action based on those
theoretical dialectics.


      	I am openly proposing very theoretical work.  I believe that while
the historian and the economist are essential to keep fancy in check, this
is largely work for inventors.  It sounds like a flighty approach , and
possibly it is, but right now the very serious work of textual scholars,
historians, and other worthy intellectuals with rigorous methods have not
prevented us from being mired in ambiguity and impracticality, blurred in
our collective vision, and yoked with alienation from the people we desire
to serve.  They cannot be blamed, since their work is intellectually
serious and completely necessary.  What may have led to a desultory
movement, is as I said the substitution of desire for logic, and the
perceived need to defend our history to the disservice of forwarding our
politics.  While the latter is connected to intellectual culture (their
job being to analyze the status quo) it is not their fault.  While the
former is part of utopianism, that tendency cannot be blamed for having
lofty ideals, like Comrade Lew. 


	The fault lies in allowing rejection of capitalism to alienate one
>from its logical underpinnings, not of exploitation, but of positive
social success.  Even in the comparatively little Marx I have read, I
remember a forthright acknowledgment of capitalism's success.  This was
not a mere nod, as I see it, but a prerequisite for understanding his
theory.  Such a prerequisite understanding was not a mere map to the horror
of exploitation, but a guide to the dialectical development of a
successful modern society.  While it must be said that Marx was hardly a
cheerleader for bourgeois democracy, the logic of his method for analyzing
history demands us recognize that socialism will not be built on the ashes
of its predecessor, but the social and economic infrastructure. 




	peace






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