Date: Sat, 15 Apr 1995 01:09:59 -0800 From: jones/bhandari <djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu> Subject: Re: Marxism as science In response to my "Kevin Brien" post, Rahul raised several interesting points: >I'd have to say I basically agree with Brien's analysis. I never said >Marxists were howling lunatics or anything of the sort. I fail to see, >however, what bearing this has on the question of Marxism as science. As >best as I can distill his turgid prose, he's saying that although there are >many possible factors which could block a transition to socialism, there is >still a historical trend toward transition. That's a nice way of putting >it, but it's just words -- how do you test the existence of such a tendency >and where's the proof that it exists? I'd say there's even more empirical >proof for the existence of a trend toward the tyranny of global finance >capital and multinational corporations. >Rahul Mahajan 1. Brien's concerns with existential viability of forms of social consciousness, the logical possibility of the formation of new counter-tendencies (esp to the fall in the average rate of profit), and the relative autonomy of the superstructure during protracted crisis all suggest that Marx's theory (as reconstructed by Brien) cannot be understood as what Daniel Little has called and himself critiqued as predictive-theory naturalism. My purpose in quoting this passage was not to critique Rahul but to bring out--let's say--the open dialectic of Marxism for which there is no room in certain conceptions of science. I must say however that I am not quite in agreement with Brien's conceptualization of counter-tendencies, while I am at this point unable to advance a rival conceptualization. It seems to me that the growing impotence of counter-tendencies and the growing necessity of ever more violent crises are indeed predicted by Marxism and that it is positively harmful to suggest to the working class that it is possible that some counter-tendency may arise which will enable the advancement of the productive forces and assure full employment (bourgeois economists would like us to believe that with the dissemination of microelectronics the capitalist system has once again found an epochal innovation which could not be predicted but will soon set the world on the upswing of its next Kondratieff wave, as long of course as the state does not fall into hands of subnormals and decadents and prematurely socialize the economy). In short, I think that Brien's notion of the logical possibility of unforseen countertendencies may be an implicit concession to the bourgeois ideology of innovation and "waiting out its dissemination", in which the proletarian movement then becomes embedded, e.g., through participation in worker retraining programmes, instead of strategizing what it would require to win political power. It is of course true that certain capitals may be able to stave off crisis at the expense of others and attempt to enlist fractions of the working class in such a project. But it seems to me to be essence of Marxian science to prove that there is no way out of crisis for the working class as whole but by way of proletarian revolution (it is the utter realism, not anti-scientific propagandism, which has drawn me to the work of Rosa Luxemburg, Henryk Grossmann, William Blake, Tommy Jackson, Paul Mattick, Tom Kemp, Walter Daum and others). .I fear that in developing what is often a brilliant critique of predictive-naturalist science, Marxists will leave the working class frozen with the quintessentially bourgeois hope that counter-tendencies may logically arise which will again enable a rapid development of the productive forces. And do so of course without the necessity of frightening class conflict. But Lukacs reminded us long ago what long-term consequences derive from the morality of industrial harmony. Brien, I think, is unresolved on this issue, for the example of his counter-tendency is fascism. But isn't this to say that the only alternative to capitalism is barbarism, not the logical possibility that economic mechanisms may be found to reestablish rapid accumulation? While the older Marxists on the line may have had a more difficult time posing the alternatives this way when people were waddling in the mud of Woodstock (sorry I couldn't resist), it is I believe much clearer to this generation what capitalism entails. Ralph has raised the problem however of our sense of impotence in the face of catastrophe--as the problem we have to confront-- instead of Marxist party building. This is a profound question, but I think I will be reading through Robert Guttmann's How Credit Money Shapes the Economy. Sharpe, 1994 this week instead of thinking about it. By the way, I just attended a talk on Rwandan holocaust where the Zairean speaker reminded the audience that the primary obstacle to a tribunal at this point is the lack of funds. 2. I think that Brien is emphatically denying that there is any historical trend towards socialism. He is bringing out the importance of a transformation in the existential viability of forms of social consciousness if capitalist breakdown is to be turned into revolution, instead of healing process for capital through for example the process of ever-more severe crisis-induced devaluations and centralization (which of course may be accomplished through the barbarism of war). Brien is attempting to undermine "economic determinism" and therewith a certain scientistic conception of revolutionary theory. 3. The suggestion of the tyranny of global finance and multinational corporations recalls the the ideas of super-imperialism and planned capitalism. This is a very important debate. I will have to think about it. Rakesh --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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