Date: Mon, 10 Nov 1997 23:56:38 -0800
From: Mark Jones <Jones_M-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: Re: Globalism: systemic crisis factors


This is helpful and I take my earlier intemperate words back, Dennis.
Tausch seems to be not just an Arrighi follower, but someone who is influenced
by liberation theology, therefore no Marxist obviously. Hope I'm not doing him
an injustice; his earnestness and passion is terribly touching. I should dearly
like Rakesh to help me understand this stuff about Kondratiev waves. In any
case, we need to integrate these four separate strands: the militarised US
economy you mention; 2nd, globalism/neoliberalism is actually a
restructuring-thru-permanent-deflation, a kind of endless *low-intensity crisis*, a
bit like Kidron's permanent arms economy or Baran and Sweezy's
under-consumption, rising surplus model in the sense of crisis-suspended thru
twisting the laws of motion somehow; 3rdly, US seignorage; and 4thly, the ways
in which eco-crisis become imbricated into the circuits of reproduction, I don't
just mean thru on-costs but in a deeper, perhaps political sense.

What I see happening is (a) third world regions falling off the map into a
historical abyss (the latest UN population forecasts already reflect this,
incorporating African AIDs epidemics, Rwandan genocide and Eastern European
falling population into the 50-year forecast, so that the headline optimism
about falling trends actually translates out into being cheered by genocide,
as well as Indian women having fewer kids)

(b) impending oil shock, this time permanent, causing massive price inflation, 
recession and tumultous reconfiguring of industries, but how far can all 
that go, to solve the underlying energy-deficit, food-deficit problems? 

In other words, can world capitalism restructure its way successfully out 
of this growing multiform crisis? 

Tausch actually know it can't happen but rather desperately is looking for ways 
it might.

Like Tausch, we too on this list need to sharpen our Excel spreadsheets.

(c) War in the mid-East and/or with China

(d) We have to think thru in detail what it means to say and understand that the
USA is not just the global heart of darkness but is in radical, and increasingly
visible ways, UNSUSTAINABLE as a social infrastructure and economy.

What will happen when rising population, falling living standards and growing
eco-disorders intersect?

I always liked Harry Cleaver's notion that capitalism is somehow always on the
ropes, or is just a shadow on the wall, and that it is the protean proletariat
which is really making history: there is a real truth in this, namely that no
bourgeois government in any western state can get re-elected on a ticket of
liberalism, culturally or economically, in periods of drastic falls in living
standards and when no new New Deal is on offer, when its urban
systems are collapsing etc. In fact bourgeois democracy has already closed down
and is already transformed more-or-less itno a real Panopticon society. 
This, too, is evidence of the growing Final Crisis.

Finally we ABSOLUTELY HAVE  to get away from the mental prison of
LENINISM APPLIED UNCRITICALLY TO/DISMISSED UNCRITICALLY 
FROM THE NEW CIRCUMSTANCES, I mean that we have to start to 
retheorise socialism, both historically and as a current practice, 
as A CONDITIONED RESPONSE TO THE
REAL HISTORICAL PROBLEM, NAMELY THE CHRONIC
UNDER-PRODUCTION OF CAPITAL. 

What this means is that we have to take on board the ways in which successful
revolutions are going to happen in contions of collapse and generalsied
crisis, not in some Erewhon-style fantasy of capitalism gently
growing-over into communist abandunce. That seems to mean centralsied,
disiciplined proletarian parties.

The rate of capital accumulation has always been too low, and that is the real
reason why the reserve army has become so over-inflated, and it is also the
reason why, as Lou Proyect properly says, that we only have socialism 
"in the forms that it takes in the 20th century in countries, [ie] 
under military and economic siege, with poor resources and labor productivity, 
and weak democratic traditions." 

In other words, conditions which guarantee ab initio either
Stalinist/Leninist/Maoist forms of struggle and leadership cults -- or immediate
failure, Menshevik-style.

Only militarised, centralised parties can hope to succeed, and only by a severe
dragooning of the working class and its allies, and only, as Lenin said, by having a
party operate like a political factory, with an iron division of labour and
'under martial law'.

Dennis R Redmond wrote:

> On Mon, 10 Nov 1997, Mark_Jones posted from Arno Tausch:
>
> > Europe must also lead the way in bringing about a lean and socially just
> state
> > at the same time. Social justice, by and large, means gender justice today
> > (UNDP, 1995). The eastward expansion of the Union will further increase this
>
> > problem dimension. Faced by the marginalization of women on the labour
> > markets due to the workings of globalization, Europe is tempted to spend its
> way
> > out to maintain their position in a global context. The eastward expansion
> of
> > the Union will mean, that millions of up to now economically marginalized
> women
> > will become citizens of the Union, whose fate has to be taken care of by
> > Brussels at least in some way.
>
> I agree with most of what Tausch is saying, namely that global capitalism
> is exterminating the ecosphere. Still, I'm not sure that a lean state can
> be reconciled with social justice; if the EU doesn't somehow finance the
> growth of its peripheries, then the pressures to ravage the ecology for a
> quick euro will be even greater than they already are. This is especially
> true in Europe, where the state does a lot of redistribution, funds higher
> education, and has improved environmental standards dramatically (a dire
> contrast to our own national security state, which is basically a giant
> subsidy program for Boeing and the military-industrial sector). On the
> other hand, if by a "lean" state we mean less money on highways, nuke
> plants and auto subsidies, and more money for the peoples and ecoregions
> of Europe, then I'm all for that.
>
> -- Dennis
>
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