From: "Karl Carlile" <joseph-AT-indigo.ie>
Date: Wed, 11 Jun 1997 11:03:23 +0000
Subject: Re: M-TH: Popper's critique of Marxism (fwd)


KARL: Good morning Chris. The rain has been coming down in continuous 
torrents over the night and into the morning in Dublin.

CHRIS: What YOU are saying, and what has historically been said by many
socialists convinced of the inevitability of their utopian ideal are quite
different.  There has always been a kind of intellectual hubris projected
by those who used to feel that capitalism was simply headed for a crack up
and that the communism of Marx's dreams was on the horizon.  This took on
the flavor of an almost messianic theology.  Considering that much of this
is owed to the original Hegelian philosophy of history, itself influenced
by Hegel's theological upbringing, this is not surprising.  

KARL: Not true Chris Marxism does not claim that the collapse of
capitalism and its replacement by socialism is an historical
inevitablitity. It does not rule out the possibility that socialism
may never be established. In that sense the emergence of socialist
society is a historcial contingency rather than a necessity.

However marxism does say  that if the forces of production are to
develop further then value relations must be replaced by socialist
relations as forms through which the forces of production can be
further developed. The point being that value relations are
historically obsolesecent. They function in a contradictory and even
destructive manner which rather than facilitating the development of
the forces of production in a way that directly benefits the mass of
the people as a whole exericse a restraining and stunting effect on
the productive forces. However this is not to say that value
relations as obsolescent social forms cannot be perpetuated
indefinitly. We only have to examine history to recognise that this
is not the case. In the period 1914-1939 (approximately) value
relations had become increasingly unable to resolve the
profitability crisis so much so that it led to the emergence of
fascist states together with increased inter-imperialist rivalries.
This led to the first and second world wars. In relation to these
developments this capitalist crisis also expressed itself in the form
of the development of the class struggle to the point where the
question of the working class seizing state power became a live issue
in different parts of the world.

Now over this period the working class suffered significant defeat
after defeat. Furthermore as a result of the wars one section of the
imperialist bourgeoisie (the one lead by the German bourgeoisie) was
defeated. This conjuncture of events entailed both the massive
destruction and devalorisation of capital. This conjuncture of global
events created the objective and subjective conditions for a
restoration of profitability to a level that allowed the resumption
by capitalism of the accelerated accumulation of capital. This
accelerated accumulation expressed itself in what became as the
post-war boom.

In short value relations in the form of capital are historically
obsolescent. However it is only through the outcome of the class
struggle that it is decided whether those obsolescent social
relations of production are to replaced by historically progressive
ones. Clearly then for marxism there  is none of the Hegelian
inevitability that you make reference to.

If you are to obtain an authentic understanding of the nature of 
marxism it is indispensable that you embark upon a serious study of 
Marx's Capital. The problem is that many of the so called marxists 
on this and other marxism lists have never pursued such a serious 
engagement with Capital which helps explain the crass sectarian 
bigotry I experience on theses lists.


                                                                      
                                              Karl                                                                      
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                                                      
                                              






















































































































































































































































































































































































































































































































	The problem for me, is this:  When individuals project that kind
of "end of history" and measure the reality against it, they almost always
try to CONSTRUCT a bridge to that end.  And if the end itself is
unreachable, as I believe Marxian communism is, then the consequences will
most likely be quite different from the intentions of those who seek to
create it.

> I cannot, for the life of me, see how this modest viewpoint of mine 
> can be identified by you with making "judgments about the ultimate
> telos of human history."  Perhaps there is a misunderstanding 
> here. If so provide the list with an example of what you understand 
> to be some of these synoptic vantage points of Marx's.
> Look forward to hearing from you Chris and anybody else who cares to
> join in. Karl
	Marx was notoriously silent in many ways in his descriptions of
the socialist future, claiming that we couldn't be creating recipes for a
future that had yet to unfold.  But by giving us a view of that future
that was entirely without a state or a market, Marx leaves us awaiting a
kind of nirvana that is, in my view, unreachable.  How he could KNOW that
this was an inevitable consequence out of capitalist development, and how
he could abstract himself from the social totality to take an Archimedean
point of view on history, is entirely undialectical in my view.  It is a
kind of synopticism that one finds in certain versions of dialectic going
back to Plato, but it is illegitimate.
					- Chris -
==========================================Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Ph.D.
Visiting Scholar
New York University Department of Politics
715 Broadway
New York, New York  10003-6806
Email:      sciabrrc-AT-is2.nyu.edu
Website:    http://pages.nyu.edu/~sciabrrc
==========================================



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                          Yours etc.,
                                     Karl   


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