From: "Dave Bedggood" <dr.bedggood-AT-auckland.ac.nz>
Date: Sat, 25 Oct 1997 13:47:35 +0000
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: reforms? 


In response to Jukka:

Your pessimism is directly related to your confusion about what 
capitalism is. If you think its 19th industrial society, now 
qualitatively changed into post-industrial society, this is just 
popular sociology. This reveals a method of analysing capitalism 
which is stuck at a surface level, picking up on superficial 
appearances "post-industrial" as capitalism presents itself in its 
fetishised inverted exchange relations.  Its an example of either a 
neo-Weberian [i.e. marginalist economics plus a dose of evolutionary 
idealism] or neo-Ricardian analysis. It takes as it starting point 
the naturalisation of production [in the neo-ricardian version] and
 exchange [in the neo-weberian version.]
In the neo-W version class is a distributional phenomenon which can 
be remedied by bourgeois democracy. In the neo-R version, class 
results from unequal exchange and in a utopian way can still be 
remedied by a struggle for control of the  bourgeois state.   
So while you may think that you are thinking anew,  you are like Doug, 
doing no more than recycling pre-marxist concepts about capitalism - that is 
neo-classicalism in both Weberian marginalist form, and Ricardian 
classical form. 
All of the fundamental features that Marx discovered 
in capitalism are alive and well. The mass of speculative finance 
capital that is subject to huge devaluations with currency movements 
etc was predicted by Marx.  This results from an overproduction of 
capital that cannot be productively invested profitably. The gross 
concentration and centralisation of capital at the one pole, and the 
accumulation of misery at the other pole as the contradiction 
develops in intensity, threatens blow the whole system apart while 
you and Doug sit their rethinking marxism. 
Most obviously, the system is beyond the control of any one group of 
national capitalists and their state. This is the real beauty of 
so-called globalisation - the ruling class can try all they might to 
hide behind their national flags, but they are driven to push for 
free trade to repartition the world, and in so doing they push the 
international grave-digging class into solidarity and  towards the workers 
world.
Just in case you may think that this is an inevitable, objective, 
process, look at the arguments we are having on socialist ethics and 
the role of the vanguard party on these lists.
Dave.

> Bob M. and Dave B. have reacted to my hasty outburst. 
> 
> Dave B. thinks that I'm (with "mensheviks" - I thought they were 
> buried with the Russian revolution) writing "off or at least 
> question(ing) our ability to build a revolutionary party today on the 
> grounds that it failed in the past, or that revolutionaries are too 
> divided and weak." 
> 
> If I had to choose between these two possibilities I'd take the last 
> one. The problem with whole supposition behind Dave's post seems to 
> be that old 19th century categories and concepts of "classic" 
> industrial society are still valid. I don't know when industrial 
> society peaked in New Zealand but here in Finland it's easy to 
> determine: it was in early seventies. After that "post-industrial" or 
> whatever society has been developing little by little. And that 
> affects to nearly everything from class structure to politics and 
> culture. Therefore we have to think once again nearly everything 
> anew. Sorry, but I'm not interested in romantic "traditional" 
> revolution which is simply impossible today, at least in "developed 
> countries". Dreaming of it is simply waste of time. There are better 
> and more urgent things to do. Or as Doug hinted, instead of abstract 
> generalisations we'd do better with concentrating on what's really 
> going on in social world. It might be suprising - and scary... 
> 
> When it comes to Bob M's post, well, I'm afraid Bob is simplifying 
> things too much, but your major point 
> 
> >  Men kunde du f=F6rklara vad som h=E4nder i Finland? 
> > Min uppfattning =E4r att den Finnska bougeoisin nu ser den 
> > chans som dem har vantit p=E5 l=E4ngre!
> 
> is right in this sense: bourgeoisie was forced to made compromises 
> with social democrats and folk/popular democrats (incl. communists) 
> during post-WW2 period and now it tries to get rid of them. Of 
> course. However, also in the case of Finland there's more than that 
> ("national particularities" of which I have no time to write). It was 
> almost exactly at the same time as thatcherism got the power in UK 
> (late seventies) that right began its ideological offensive. In 1980s 
> that became obvious (conservatives were taken in government first 
> time for decades - by social democrats), firstly with economic 
> policy. Post-WW2 bank and finance policies were freed almost in one 
> night. Basically that - with the end of trade with USSR that caused a 
> wave of bankrupties - caused the depression we're still living: 
> foreign debt increased almost astronomically in couple of years and 
> (at that time purely bourgeois) government threw oil into flames with 
> wrong politics, contra Swedish government at the same time (here 
> unemployment increased drastically unlike in Sweden). 
> 
> > Vad g=F6r den Finska CP och andra str=F6mningar i f=F6rh=E5llande.. ?
> 
> Today the local CP consists of handful nutty stalinoids. They're 
> living in the past, therefore of no interest. Former folk/popular 
> democrats are today called Left Union (or somesuch, not sure how to 
> translate it) and eagerly in government led by conservatives and 
> social democrats. It's called "political realism" - do what you can, 
> even in hard times. 
> 
> Jukka L 
> 
> 
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> 

Dave Bedggood


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