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. --- from list marxism-thaxis-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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