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 --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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