Date: Mon, 29 Dec 1997 23:42:05 -0800 From: Mark Jones <Jones_M-AT-netcomuk.co.uk> Subject: M-I: Re: Marxisms Anniversary, Long Live (a piece of)Marxism! Michael Albert's piece about who remembers or cares about Marxism's anniversaries raises some questions which deserve a response. He begins by ascribing the seeming eclipse of Marxism to the collapse of the 'dungeon of the Soviet Empire'. It is obvious from what he says next that he never visited the place and knows next to nothing about Soviet history either, so I ignore this remark as unworthy of comment. He goes on: > Should the > court of intellectual evaluation find Marxism and Marxism Leninism > innocent of responsibility for the Soviet debacle? This already identifies his view about the relationship between theory and practice, and the priviliged role of the intellectual as ethicist, social guide and mentor to the masses, something he develops later. If his article ended there it would be enough to tell us that Michael Albert himself is not guilty of Marxism and never has been. He therefore speaks as an outsider, and his critique is bourgeois and professorial. It is unmarxist in tone, method, theoretical assumptions and conclusions. This is therefore not a case of a turncoat, but at best of someone who once imagined he understod marxism and perhaps even called himself one, but was deluded. He did not understand marxism. Perhaps it took him a while to find this out. Perhaps he began to develop a certain resentment at his growing feelings of incomprehension at the intellectual corpus of a worldview which this unfortunate youthful infatuation with, only served to marginalise him in later life. He was punished, and Lo! For nothing, because he was never even guilty of marxism (or leninism, or of any tincture of revolutionary thought or action) in the first place. Shame. Alternatively he was one of the egregious breed of 'radical economists' which infested campuses 20 or so years ago when the tenure pickings were good for those capable of mouthing Autonomist or clerical-Maoist phrases, or who nodded sagely whenever Ian Steedman spoke gravely of the 'absurdity' of non-iterative transformation procedures when the obvious fact (to Steedman) was that inputs had to be transformed simultaneously with outputs, a task which was deemed (a) historically necessary for the emancipation of the masses and (b) one which only graduate economists competent in simultaneous equations were capable of. In this case Albert's renunciation has the same significance to the world as did his earlier affirmations of faith, when he hovered like a sacristan around the votive staffroom bulletin-boards -- ie, no significance at all, except to himself and his wife. Yet this is too hasty: in fact Albert's mangled mishmash of halfbaked assertions, voodoo-Proudhonism, trite truisms, academic me-tooisms and pitiful pleas to have his apostasy written into the faculty records for the betterment of his superannuation payments, does merit attention on this holiday void at least, if only because his stupidity is not only the private stupidity of a greedy, inconsequential, blinkered, socially-fearful petit-bourgeois, it is also, as he properly says, a stupidity widely shared 'in the industrialised west' at least. > One has to carefully evaluate Marxism > as a theory of history and particularly economics, Why not evaluate Marxism in its own terms, ie, as a CRITIQUE of economics (as mystification) and an ANALYSIS (not theory) of history? Perhaps because that would disclose the truth that far from being 'utopian', 'messianic' etc, marxism-leninism is grounded in historical, conjunctural analysis AIMED AT POLITICAL INTERVENTIONS the purpose of which is to ASSURE PROLETARIAN VICTORY IS THE OUTCOME OF CAPITALIST CRISIS AND REVOLUTIONARY DEMARCHE. No more biting, radical critiques of Soviet history, for instance, exist than the critiques of the marxists themselves, because they approach the history of their class, the proletariat, with unsentimental eyes and pronounce their judgments in the harshest, most merciless tones: but their judgment is never the Olympian, utopic discourse of (bourgeois) economists whose conclusions is always and only that revolution is a bad thing, socialism is impossible and capitalism is the best of all possible (fallen) worlds. The marxists always judge history in terms of how to better make revolutions, how to better conduct people's war, how to better (and more openly) conspire insurections, how to better entrench the dictatorship of the proletariat against its foes, and incidentally how to better subjugate the petit-bourgeois, that swamp of profound superficiality, of vanity, pretensions, egotism and world-destroying complacency, from which Albert himself hails. > and Leninism as > a view of how to overcome capitalism putting in its place socialism, > communism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, etc. Over the years > Robin Hahnel and I have spent considerable time doing this. Here I > can only summarize the conclusions we have argued in depth and > detail elsewhere: > > 1.Marxist dialectics at its best is an overly obscure > methodological reminder to think holistically and historically; > at its worst it’s a philosophically absurd drain on creativity > and range of perception. Albert makes a feeble joke about onanism, but nothing is shown except that he has no concept of contradiction, no sense of social indignation, no historical passion: all the life was drained from him in the struggle for tenure. Dialectics confronts the fact that contradiction and the law of (the unity of) opposites is fundamental not just to social life but to nature. Thus for example Sir John Houghton, co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has recently stated (summarising) that we have until the year 2005 to do something about carbon emissions, whereafter it will be too late, because quantitative climate change will assume critical, qualitative forms. This is dialectics of nature, but it also means (broadly speaking) that the proletariat's last battle against capitalism, the last attempt of humankind to requite itself honourably and allow life on earth to continue, has begun. It is time to enter the trenches. But for the 'marxological' onanist Albert, none of this means a damn thing. He's an economist. Capitalism, socialism, barbarism, sacrifice, struggle, people's war -- these are words which either his eye glides uncomprehendingly over, or which do no more than excite a curious cynical wobble on his mouth, a fleeting expression of disdain. Either we act by 2005 or 40% of the population of China (according to the latest OECD Outlook, no less) risks inundation by globally-warmed seas. (The OECD's 'GUIDING THE TRANSITION TO SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT', Nov 1997, begins with the following peroration: The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) now faces an analytical and policy challenge as urgent, difficult, and far reaching in its implications as any in history. All major global ecosystems are in decline amid rapid population growth and continuously rising real incomes and increasing global economic activity. Yet government policies dealing with the economy, with the environment, and with equity remain badly disconnected and often in direct conflict. When you consider what the OECD is, that is remarkable. When you consider that Michael Albert thinks he is a 'radical' who is 'opposed to private property' but who thinks that Marxism is irrelevant -- then you begin to see just what an uphill struggle the OECD will have to get the rest of dumb mankind to listen up). > 2.Historical Materialism’s main claims are denied by history. > Its > lesser claims are not entirely wrong, but when "real existing > people" utilize the concepts of historical materialism they > inexorably arrive at an economistic and mechanical view of > society, systematically under-valuing and mis-understanding > social relations of gender, political, cultural, and ecological > origin and import. Historical materialism says that history is class struggle, labour really not just formally subsumed by capital. Gender, ecology, culture etc etc, are really not just formally instances that are overdetermined by class relations. The Soviet Union is as a historical reminder of how baleful capitalism can be if you only cut off one of the heads of the beast; how important it is to cut them al off, and how that means declaring UNRELENTING PEOPLE'S WAR ON WORLD CAPITALISM. The only true lesson of Soviet history is that peaceful coexistence can be a tactic, but barely even that, and even then only as a BREATHING SPACE WHILE NEW ALL-OUT OFFENSIVES ARE PREPARED. Marxism without this martial spirit becomes ... well, let us see what it becomes in Albert's limp hands... > 3.Marxist class theory has disguised the importance of the > coordinator (professional-managerial or technocratic) class > and its antagonisms with the working class and with capital, > No, we know the importance of swamps. They have to be DRAINED,or avoided. > 4.The Labor Theory of Value misunderstands the determination > of wages, prices, and profits in capitalist economies and > turns activists’ thought away from a needed social-relations > view of capitalist exchange. The dynamics of the workplace > and market are largely functions of bargaining power and > social control, categories essentially ignored by the labor > theory of value. This gibberish is what you get when you abandon differential calculus. Go back to simultaneous equations, old pal. At least we didn't know what you were doing in private, back then. > 5.Marxist crisis theory, in all its variants, distorts > understanding > of capitalist economies and anti-capitalist prospects by > seeing intrinsic collapse where no such prospect exists Albert really believes this. He does not believe that capitalism is in crisis.Meanwhile, in Japan Mitsubishi and other keiretsu have set up RITE. RITE is The Japanese fund "Research Initiatives for Innovative Technology for the Earth". It is actually about Research Initiatives for Innovative Technology for the Benefit of Japanese Corporate Capital but that's another matter. RITE has genetically engineered plankton with superior carbon-entrapment features, which it proposes to launch into the world ocean when the time is right, ie, when we are all so desperate and panicky about global warming we don't give a fuck about the whole planetary chain of being any more, which runs from plankton to whales to you and me. This plankton will destroy the biosphere as it now exists at it's root. But it won't be enough, in a runaway global warming, so RITE has also invented a system of very large pipes which will pump CO2 to the ocean floor, where they consider that nothing much lives but a few worms, although real oceanographers say the deep oceans contain more biodiversity than the rain forests and are a key link in creation. No mater; to Save The Planet, we shall turn the deep oceans into carbonic acid so strong that the world's coral reefs will dissolve... > and > orienting activists away from the importance of their own > organizing as the basis for change, that is far more > promising. Huh? HUH??? > 6.Regarding visions of desirable societies, Marxism is > particularly obstructive. First there is Marxism’s general > taboo > against "utopian" speculation. Second, Marxism presumes > that if economic relations are desirable other social relations > will fall into place. Third, Marxism is permanently confused > about what constitutes an equitable distribution of income -- > "from each according to ability to each according to need" is > not a viable economic guide (it is utopian Am I seeing things post-prandially or does this sentence contradict the one before? > "from each according to work and to > each according to contribution to the social product" is not a > morally worthy maxim (it rewards productivity, including > genetic endowment, beyond effort and sacrifice). And fourth, > Marxism approves hierarchical relations of production and > command planning as means of allocation. This is tendentious nonsense even as a description of the aims of 'actually-existing socialisms' and is a misreading of Marx's idea in any case, a crass consumerist misreading what's more. People who contribute to production in different ways might need/want different things, not as rewards, but even physiologically: under socialism which inherits collapse, famine, scarcity etc, will it not be sensible to allocate books to intellectual workers, more calories to manual workers? > 8.Finally, Leninism is a natural outgrowth of Marxism > employed by people in capitalist societies, and Marxism Leninism, > far > from being the "theory and strategy for the working class," is, > instead, by its focus, concepts, values, and goals, the "theory > and strategy for the coordinator (professional-managerial, > technocratic…) class." This strikes me as just as silly. If this is describing the theory and practice of 'socialism in one country', ie a proletraian revolution surviving against containment, Hitlerite war, US nucler monopoly etc, then it apporximates a little to a necessary accommodation to historical circumstances which entailed forced industrialisation, creation of a defence industry etc in circumstances which produced as an unwelcome byproduct a reinforced division of mental and manual labour. But this has nothing to do with any presciptive Marxist theory of what socialism is; and in any case insofar as the technocracy got out of control they produced not 'leninist socialism' but reborn Russian capitalism: this speaks for a stronger, not weaker proletarian dictatorship. > When theories fail in explaining reality > or guiding practice, they do need to be corrected or jettisoned. > But, when theories fail in explaining reality or guiding practice, > it > does not follow that every claim they make, every concept they > offer, and every analysis they undertake must be jettisoned. Quite > the contrary, more likely much will resurface as still valid (though > perhaps recast somewhat) in any new and better intellectual > framework. Ho-hum, another academic bore improves on marxism. > --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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