File spoon-archives/marxism-thaxis.archive/marxism-thaxis_1998/marxism-thaxis.9801, message 62


From: "jurriaan bendien" <Jbendien-AT-globalxs.nl>
Subject: Re: M-TH: Re: Marx a *naive* correspondence theorist!!
Date: Sun, 4 Jan 1998 23:47:58 +0100


Hugh Rodwell writes:

> Let's be clear. The alternative is a worldwide dictatorship of the
> proletariat that wipes out the power of the bourgeoisie to dictate the
> production and distribution of social wealth, ie a workers' revolution
led
> by an internationalist Bolshevik-Leninist party, or the catastrophic
> collapse of the capitalist mode of production destroying both the
> bourgeoisie and the modern industrial working class. Only revolutionary
> Marxists have this perspective. If Jurriaan thinks otherwise, I'd like
> chapter and verse.
> 
I don't think they are the only alternatives at all, I think Hugh is as
"clear" as mud, and I don't think it answers my question either.  Hugh just
presents a rhetorical schema for history.  Get real - the number of
level-headed Marxists who have been able to foresee the future of the
capitalist system reasonably well even up to ten years ahead can be counted
on one hand.  Capitalism can survive in all sorts of forms, more or less
barbaric, more or less repressive. Lenin: "there are no absolutely hopeless
situations for capitalism".  The defeat of the system is a political
question. But where is the world party Rod talks about ?  It doesn't exist
- it's a figment of his Trotskyoid imagination.

 No Marxist is unaware of the contradictions of capitalist development. The
> problem is that capitalism had outlived its civilizing usefulness by 1848
> at the latest. 

That is nonsense.  Civilisation has come a long way since 1848, and the
working class today is much better off than in 1848.  It is quite easy for
a normal healthy person to recognise this while also noting periodic
regressions to barbarism in the world.

The arguments marshalled by Marx and Engels there are quite
> convincing when it comes to demonstrating that social production would be
> far better managed and utilized if private appropriation was replaced by
> social appropriation.

The problem is that they are not convincing, otherwise everybody would be a
socialist by now.  In fact the market turns out to have a power of
attraction, even for the proletariat. The real problem is that socialist
economy must be seen to work efficiently, and we have no real examples of
that. The implication is that socialism will only come about through deep
crises within bourgeois society - not because people specifically want
socialism, but because they will look for any kind of system which promises
to work better. 

> As for the quote I think it's one of Jurri's amalgams, so I think chapter
> and verse are in order here, too.

An "amalgam" is a term used by Trotsky to describe an illegitimate
conflation of a person's position with another position which he does not
hold, so as to make it seem s/he holds that position as well. I did not
engage in amalgam, but in paraphrase.  Here's chapter and verse:  "If
money, according to Augier, 'comes into the world with a congenital
blood-stain on one cheek', capital comes dripping from head to toe, from
every pore, with blood and dirt."  K. Marx, Capital Volume One, end of
Chapter 31: the genesis of the industrial capitalist. Penguin edition p.
925-926. Marx is pointing out that industrial capitalism was born out of
imperialist plunder, murder, brigandage, child labour, slavery, swindle and
other "idyllic" practices.
 
I said:

> >	The perceptions of barbarism and the manifestation of irrational
> >fears in
> >popular bourgeois ideology are, I submit, directly correlated to the
> >economic growth rate of the capitalist system, i.e. to the conditions of
> >profitability and accumulation, and not to the REAL extent of barbarism
in
> >the world. 

Well just plot of curve of economic growth in the 20th century, and look at
what happens in periods of depression as compared with periods of more
rapid growth.  Whenever profits are depressed, you get out of the resulting
social disintegration (1) irrationalist and subjectivist trends, (2)
anxieties and panics, (3) a mood of pessimism and uncertainty.  It seems
like a crude "economism" to say this but it's absolutely true.  And from a
materialist point of view that is what you would expect.

Cheers

Jurriaan.




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