From: Argus-AT-pseud.pseud
Date: Fri, 14 Sep 2001 10:17:00 EDT
Subject: M-INTRO: ("Marxist"?) Society


Bach poses the question:

 "Would Marxism be able to replace capitalism and if it did, what would the 
costs and   gains be from it?'  I am very new to Marxist theory."

This first demands a defination of Marxism.  For myself, Marxism is an 
ontological orienation to understand the social world.  Models (or previous 
attempts) of alternative societies can be inspired by Marx, and the 
fountainhead of such efforts may claim to be Marxist, but I hesisant to call 
any society "Marxist".  

Marxism, as myself and Che have suggested, is about making the world a better 
place (in this sense Marxism is life time project, it is process without 
end), based on a particular (although very broad, and rather undeveloped by 
Marx himself) view of human beings, personality devleopment and motiviation.  
Roughly, human beings are in a great degree institutionally constituted.  
That is our ideas, beliefs, motivation, and personal action are determined by 
the culturally constructed institutions, espeically economic institutional 
forms (e.g. markets, profit motive etc. etc.)

It is in this sense, that social theory can never be reduced to individual 
analysis, social theory demands an institutional perspective also.  Keynes 
comes to understand this in a very urgent manner.  That is there is a hiatus 
between the individual and economic structures, we must analysis them 
seperately, but together.  Keynes's project was indeed overly urgent, and he 
suggested we utilize structural surrogates GNP, unemployment, inflation etc., 
and he did not challenge neo-Classical social theory in his General Theory 
(although he did attempt to privious to the GT).  However, good social theory 
requires more institutional rigor.  The founding fathers of sociology (Marx, 
Durkheim, Weber, Simmel) and US institutional economists (Vebeln, Polanyi, 
Commons, Ayers) provide us a foundation to begin with.  It is in this 
direction that social theory, including Marxism must take to help us 
(re-)construct more Just societies.

We need desperately to understand our own involvement tacitly reproducing 
injust and unintended consequences, through our own individual dialy actions 
as producers and consumers.  Here in the US we must begin to take some 
responsible in the hatred that so many peoples of the world feel toward us, 
and begin to change our unintended, and often unknowledged violence upon 
others.  We need to (re-)construct societies, specifically our own US 
society, where we don't have such incredible distribution of wealth maladies. 
 It is outragous that the "wealthiest", "most productive" (as former Vice 
President Qualye never tired of reminding us during the recessions years of 
the early 1990s and the first Bush administration) economy in the history of 
human kind, chronically has 30% (i.e. 70 million individuals) living in 
poverty.  Where over 70% of Americans did not share in the economic "boom" of 
the (Clinton) 1990s (well, they shared in the work but not in an increase in 
finanical gain, outragous!!!!).  We must stop the exploitation of other 
nations and their people.  We must hold our American corporations liability 
for such injustice, even when the political leaders of other countries allow 
such exploitation.  So many countries simply do not have institutional 
structures to protect their people from severe exploitation, even though the 
political bodies themselves are benefiting from US corporate presence.  There 
are very strong student movements working in this area, surely you have 
organization on your campus!

We need to extend life-time finanical support to the families that have lost 
loved ones from the terrorist acts, regardless of whether these murdered 
Americans (and non-Americans) were (lucky) enough to be employed by a firm or 
city that had good life insurance.  All americans at all times should have 
such insurance.  every american should have health and medical care provided 
for them.  As wealthy and strong as this country is, it is an outrage that we 
don't have such national benefits.  Then we need to extend such models, 
models that we ourselves can prefect, extend and help develop for the rest of 
the world.  

I urge every young person to read seriously Marx's *Capital* and begin to 
understand the limits of a profit motive (Keynes has a very short, but 
wonderful reading in his Essays in Persuasion titled The End of 
Laissez-Faire, that also heeds warning to the limits and contradictions of 
the profit motive, and the *necessity* of crisis when such a motive is the 
organizing economic principle of production, what Marx called the "anarchy of 
production", this is deeply contradictory and problematic for both 
capitalists and workers).

Required reading for all serious students attempting to understand our urgent 
times should also read institutionalist theory beginning with Karl Polanyi's 
Great Transformation.  Neo-Marxian theories from Harry Braverman, to the 
French Regulation School, and the American Social Structure of Accumlation 
Theories have utilized the institutional insights to model social 
contradictions and structural transformation.  These turbulant times will 
require young people to begin to take alternative economy theory serious once 
again, as did the depression times of the 1930s, 19(60)70s.  We are going 
into a world wide recession, and the international institutional tensions 
will be heating up.  Our success of surviving such turbulant times and 
avoiding them in the future will depend on our ability to transform  
institutional structures that are more inclusive!!!!

Although neo-Classical economics will offer very little for over coming this 
turbulent time, we must also study this body of theory very serious to 
understand the politics of so many Western people.  And be able to point out 
to them the limitation of begining with any notion of "individualism", 
negating sturtucal and institutional analysis.  We must ourselves lodge a 
Battle of Ideas, welcoming both internal and external criticism to strengthen 
our thought and ability to re-institute our contradictory society.

It is time to turn our attention to social science and politics!!!

Argus


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