Date: Fri, 26 Sep 1997 22:50:15 +0100
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: Jim Blaut on proletarians (fwd from moderator)


In message <199709261900.PAA17448-AT-pobox.ids.net>, Louis R Godena
<louisgodena-AT-ids.net> writes
>Jim sent this post to me privately which he has asked me to forward to the
>list. My much awaited reply follows.

>What Marxists
>are forgetting is the absolutrely fundamental fact that workers do not make
>social revolutions if they are economically comfortable.
> The wporkers who
>are suffering are most likely to do so. 


This is just absurd. There is no automatic or unidimensional link
between 'economic comfort' and revolution. Economic conditions are a
factor, but these are always expereinced through the prsim of existing
class consciousness, expectations, etc. 

>Hence the most revolutionary
>workers -- proletarians -- TODAY are in the poor countries.

There is no evidence for this. This tortuous reasoning says more about
your wish that their should be somewhere that is really revolutionary,
proportionate to your frustration at building revolutionary politics
where you are. 

> These folks
>are, as Lenin said, super-exploited.

Meaning what, exactly?

> Workers everywhere are exploited, but
>to find their potential for revolutionary action you don't run up formulas
>on fixed and variable capital: 

No, indeed. Economic factors do not directly imnpact upon workers
actions (see above). What the relations of *constant* and variable
capital tell you is the proportionate distribution of the social product
between capital and labour, ie exploitation, always to be understood as
an objective and not a moral category.

>you find out about infant mortality and life
>expectancy and rates of decline in real income.
>European (majority) workers will gain class cxonsciousness and move when
>they begin to suffer, as they will before long.

OK, let's look at infant mortality and life expectancy:

Since 1950 there has been a 17 per cent increase in life expectancy
worldwide: this increase has been most spectacular in the poorer
countries of Asia where it has reached twenty percent (United Nations,
World Population Prospects, 1990 Population study No120, 1991, p28).
Infant mortality rates today in Africa, Asia and Latin America are half
what they were in the 1950s (United Nations, Mortality of Children Under
Age Five: World Estimates and Projections, 1950-2025, 1988). In Africa
at that time one third of all children born did not live to see their
fifth birthday; today the figure is less than 20 per cent. In Asia the
rate of infant death has fallen from 25 per cent to five per cent over
the same period.
>
>By the way, the theory of "articulation of modes of production" has
>applicability in very few places:almost everywhere capitalism has
>interpenetrated all pre-existing forms of production such that all (?) of
>them yield capital for accumulation or welfare for the reproduction of the
>working class. And the majority of humans are within the capitalist mode of
>production in sensu strictu.

On this point is agree with Jim wholeheartedly (Indian Marxist Jairus
Banaji dealt with this problem comprehensively in the 'mode of
production debate'). But it is important to understand that Marx's
theory of exploitation was never a theory of absolute immiseration
(though it does not rule that out, see R Rosdolsky 'the so-called
'theory of immiseration' in The Making of Marx's Capital, p 300) but
rather a theory of an increasing rate of exploitation, which can and
often does coexist with a greater standard of living due to higher
productivity.

All in all, theories that see a direct line between economic deprivation
and revolutionary action missout the most important component of hte
subjective conditions of working class consciousness. Also there is a
tendency for revolutionaries to imagine revolution is more likely
somehwere other than where they are, in direct proportioon to their own
frustration at failing to make head way. The clearest expression of this
trend is the prejudice that workers in America and Europe have somehow
been 'bought off' by imperialism.

Fraternally
-- 
James Heartfield


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