File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 176


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

 


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