File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1998/marxism-international.9802, message 183


Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 14:54:59 +0000
From: James Heartfield <James-AT-heartfield.demon.co.uk>
Subject: Re: M-I: Ellen Wood


I don't know if Mark would welcome my thoughts, but I think his critique
of this passage from Ellen Wood is spot-on.

In message <34E2CE8B.4B61555-AT-netcomuk.co.uk>, "M.A.&N.G. Jones"
<Jones_M-AT-netcomuk.co.uk> writes
>
>" It's now more a question of detaching material life from the logic of
>capitalism. [!!!!!!!! pardon me???] And in the short
>term, this means that political action can't just be directed at
>offering capital incentives to do socially productive things, or at
>compensating for the ravages of capital by means of "safety nets."
>Politics must be increasingly [sic] about using state power to control
>the movements of capital and to bring the allocation of capital and the
>disposition of economic surpluses increasingly [sic] within the reach of
>democratic accountability, in accordance with a social logic
>different from the logic of capitalist competition and profitability..."
>etc etc
>
>Taking the 'safety nets' first, since Wood does, just who will do this
>'using' of 'state power', if not bureaucrats 'mediating' etc? And how
>will this be done, if not by some Democrat or US Labor Party  'revitalised' 
>by class strugle FROM BELOW? So this is a recipe for more
>bureacratic socialism tinkering at the margins with social policy,
>medicare, pensions etc, and what's more, when she speaks  boldly about:
>"using state power to control the movements of capital and to bring the 
>allocation of capital and the disposition of economic surpluses 
>increasingly within the reach of democratic accountability, in 
>accordance with a social logic [!] different from the logic of 
>capitalist competition and profitability,'
>
>what is this but verbal trickery? But a sentimentalising of 2nd
>International social imperialism, ie, 'our' state defending 'its'
>working class against the Germans etc, or the IMF as the case may be?
>Tony Benn, who was actually IN the last Labour cabinet, used to talk
>EXACTLY in these terms and Ken Livingstone and other lions of the 
>modern British labour left do so now: but what does it mean, this
>incrementalising of democratic accountability etc? Is this planning for
>a revolutionary seizure of state power? No, this is the incrementalism
>of good old fabian municipal socialism. First fix the sewers, then the
>state...

Only to add that
>It's now more a question of detaching material life from the logic of
>capitalism.
Is derived from EP Thompson's idea of the 'moral economy', by which he
meant that underlying the money (or value) economy, there is a moral
economy (roughly a use-value economy) that is distorted and interrupted
by the former. His view was that when this became unbearable, people
would intervene to restore the 'moral economy'. His examples were those
poachers and trespassers who rebelled against seventeenth century
enclosure, citing ancient rights and privileges. Wood is a keen student
of Thompson and her talk of states acting against global capitalism
smacks of the Thompsonian moral economy, with all its weaknesses of
appealing to a more ancient set of social relations to curb a more
modern one.

I entirely agree with Mark that the consequences of this is a fetish of
state autonomy, that is not justified by the real basis of the
capitalist state. I also share his scepticism towards the idea that the
world has suddenly become more 'globalised'. This is largely an alibi
used by politicians to justify their unwillingness to defend even
minimal welfare standards. It seems foolish to reverse the equation and
start deploying the myth of 'globalisation' (a fetishistic expression
for the anarchy of the market place) to demand state intervention. My
reading is that the capitalist state is intervening far too much: in its
extraordinary criminalisation of the poor, in its growing foreign
adventures etc etc.
-- 
James Heartfield


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