From: "jurriaan bendien" <Jbendien-AT-globalxs.nl> Subject: Re: M-TH: Mandel's critique of Mattick Date: Sat, 10 Jan 1998 19:23:09 +0100 Doug writes: > >This means the > >crisis can be overcome only if there occurs simultaneously a rise in the > >rate of profit and an expansion of the market, a fact which disarms both > >the employers' and the reformists' arguments. > > This is precisely what's happened in the U.S. over the last 15-20 years. > Who's disarmed now? Well I would say that this experience, as Doug says, "precisely what's happened in the U.S.", empirically and scientifically refutes both Keynesian-type and monetarist-type arguments concerning the cause and the solution to long-term recessionary conditions. The problem does not lie just in demand conditions nor in supply factors, but in the nature of capitalism as such - a mode of production in which investment plans are unco-ordinated and macro-economically anarchic, in which the exact social need for output produced can be established only "after the fact", i.e. upon sale after output has been produced, and in which economic equilibrium can be restored only through the phenomenon of crises - which is one reason why we ought to get rid of capitalism. The outcome of the Marxist critique of crisis theories is (or should be !) that the root problem is the very structure of the capitalist system itself, its very mode of functioning. However Doug touches on an important point, a point about propaganda and consciousness: you might have an excellent causal explanation of capitalist crises, but, unless you are a supreme idealist, this does not automatically or necessarily have any effect or implication for class struggles, or for the capacity of trade unions to resist the austerity drive of the employers. In fact most people probably aren't helped very much by abstract arguments about crises, because their problems are concrete and specific. Crises themselves, however much we may theorise about them, are not theoretical entities but palpable empirical realities manifesting themselves in decling output, overproduction, and unemployment, and they ought to be analysed as such, with the theory as a basis. In this respect I agree with Mandel's attempt to relate the abstract theory, through mediations, to the empirical facts, as for example in his book La Crise, in a way which acknowledges the need for a multi-causal approach. If the supersession of capitalism is the real problem, then the solution must lie in political organisation, and it is there that - globally speaking - the main weakness of the American Left has been, including - let me hasten to add - Mandel's Fourth International. This relates back to some discussions we had earlier, the fact that Marxists - particularly since the days of the Stalinist catastrophe - have been rather bad at relating Marxist insights to the culture of everyday life in capitalist society, to lifestyles and mentalities, to things that really immediately affect people, and things that people can have a real effect on. To put it bluntly, Marxists haven't been all that persuasive and convincing. There remains a major gap between theory (often developed in a university atmosphere) and practice (the lived experience of workers' struggles). Mandel was an incredibly persistent socialist propagandist, but on closer inspection a lot of his argumentation boils down to a few axioms: (1) capitalism is bad, (2) we need socialism, (3) people are capable of revolution and building socialism. That's fine and good, but in the sophisticated culture of today that doesn't necessarily convince people and it may only attract people who are actually not wellplaced to have a big effect on what happens in society. Regards Jurriaan --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
Display software: ArchTracker © Malgosia Askanas, 2000-2005