Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 13:53:35 -0800 From: jones/bhandari <djones-AT-uclink.berkeley.edu> Subject: Re: countertendencies Rahul's reply is I think very important: the length of this post shows that it has exercised me. A few thoughts on a. the lesson of the welfare state b. the nature of poverty in the imperialist nations and c. the importance of imperialism as a countertendency a. The lesson of the welfare state is not being "unlearned": first, the welfare state has always included repressive institutions about which the poor are learning more everyday (hence, my query about GS Jones' Outcast London) and second, welfarism cannot be relearnt given the crisis of profitablity--"...the momentum of capital accumulation is determined above all by the rate of profit: as long as the rate of profit (or in some circumstances the mass of profit) is growing, a rising volume of state spending can be carried by capitalism without any necessary threat to its general stability. So the real source of the crisis can be located in the increasing difficulty which capitalism as a whole and especially its weaker sections experience in maintaining its rate of profit and this, for Marxism, is the classical expression of the fundamental contradiction. Because of its political implications this point must be stressed, especially in connection with state spending on the social services. That capitalism is no longer able to finance an adequate welfare state, and in in fact driven to make severe cuts, indicates not that spending on the welfare state is the cause of the crisis [not Rahul's point, I understand] but signifies that capitalism can no longer provide the basic requirements (health care, education, social services, etc.) for the millions who are after all the most decisive elements in the productive forces. The roots of this inability are to be found not in the national economy and its malfunctioning, but are international in character..." (Geoffrey Pilling, Crisis of Keynesianism--A Marxist View. Totowa, NJ: Barnes and Noble, 1986; on this theme, see also Mario Cogoy's essays in the International Journal of Political Economy, v 17, n 2 and Paul Mattick's writings) In short we will not find at this point in the bourgeois state tutees for the "lesson of the welfare state" . However, prison, border patrol and police specialists for the permanently unemployed should apply. b. Rahul also questions my concession to subjectivism: "are you simply saying that because workers in the First World have come to expect more they are as likely to feel exploited?". No, I was suggesting that peoples' needs, though historically developed and generated by capital's dynamic, are real enough indeed that their mounting frustration in times of protracted crisis is experieced as real misery and can impel political action, the nature of which I must emphasize is indeterminate. Whether people feel morally indignant about exploitation or whether they feel that exploitation and its result profit are a limited and miserable basis on which to develop and use the productive forces for human development is an interesting question. I think that Marx's argument is more the latter. There is no moralism involved in this claim, only the suggestion that revolutionary politics is indeed possible in the imperialist nations, though the most vicious forms of poverty do not (as of yet fully) exist. That political action is probable should be enough to convince Marxists that they must intervene in determining its nature (don't leave it to Kevin Phillips), instead of predicting that rebellion will again soon be neutralized anyway by the countertendency of a welfare state--once that lesson is relearned (the cycle of rebellion and pacification highlighted by the undialectical Frances Piven and Richard Cloward is nearing its end, I think, or at least it is being taken to a higher level: the other face of pacification is showing itself more every day). Dismissing the First World as hopelessly one-dimensional, predicting the reemergence of the welfare state, leaves the door open for the real countertendency of fascism. The egregrious sophistry may be in the Marcusean, New Left thesis. Whether this is a less moral battle than the elimination of extreme want on a world scale is I suspect what Rahul is questioning. (He may also be suggesting an actual international tranfer of value from which the working classes in the imperialist countries benefit). But what I am attempting to do is turn around what you underlined as a 'countertendency' in the imperialist nations--the absence of the most glaring forms of poverty. As suggested in point a, they are returning and point b, people may act on the basis of historically developed needs, irreducilbe to extreme want. Now we know that Marx noted the wage did include a historical-cultural component , which Paolo Giussani has endeavored to leave less indeterminate in this piece which I cited in my last post. In other words, this historical-cultural component may be no less real (this of course implies the historicity of human needs, i.e., they are not biologically given) and that this historical variability of needs may indeed be explainable by the laws of capital accumulation (all this requires careful analysis, I understand). It is possible that a drop below an already developed standard, achieved during a period of capital accumulation, will be objectively experienced as social misery. But Grossmann also noted that such a drop will also entail real physical misery. To this Rahul did not reply. As I quote more of Grossmann's wage theory, keep in mind the groundbreaking work of Mike Parker and Jane Slaughter on the nature of just-in-time production, quality cirlces, etc.: "The intensification of the labor-process is not the *result* of a higher standard of living, as Bukharin asserts, but rather proceeds from the objective course of capitalist production as its result and is therefore the cause, the impulse toward wage struggles and toward raising the standard of living. Then, as a result of the increasing intensity [of labor] the previous wage, which corresponded to the value of labor-power, automatically falls belows that value. Laobr-power is unable to be fully reproudcued, This sparks the wage struggle, andin the event of success wages again are raised t the value of labor-power. Thus it is completely irrelevant whether the new wage 'lasts quite a long' time for it to become the custome of the working class. In the epoch of vigorous rationalization, with the increases in the intensity of labor rapidly following one after the other, wages till correspond to yesterday' value for labor-power, today are already falling below that value, and thus in short the working class must always struggle for new wages increases, in rapid intervals one following the other, without waiting until in each case teh fought-for wage level becomes customary." Now this analysis has nothing to do with the dubious categories of First and Third Worlds. Many have suggested that the industrial working class in the so-called Third World is a labor aristocracy because of the wage increases it has been able to win and its general condition as opposed to the peasantry. For example, see the work of Fanon. In fact bourgeois academics already justify the existing wages in the maquiladoras as they are higher than anywhere else in Mexico for women of similar skills. They fail to add the years taken off these womens' lives, which of course may make their wages the lowest of all. Once wages are thus studied in the context of the actual labor process--as Grossmann alone did before WWII, I believe-- then the highest wages may indeed turn out to be quite miserable. In short, there is real social and physical misery of the working class located in the so-called First World. And we have not even yet discussed the fragmentation and alienation of the labor process, concentrating only on intensification. c. Rahul has often suggested that imperialism has been a very countertendency against the transition to socialism in the advanced capitalist countries. I am perhaps more in agreement with this than most of the writers from whom I have learned the most. Here is something from Wm Blake's unpublished 1948 manuscript however on the historical importance of imperialism. "The stage of deca determines the nature of the escapes most utilized. In some early phases, it is 'primitive accumulation', or transfer of consumer goods by piracy, that was the age of Raleigh. Then it was in the control of tranditng posts, that is the robbery of natives, so as to obtain chapea materials; such was the age of spices and silks. , of Portuguese imperialism in the Golden Age and of the Dutch and English conflict in the days of Charles II (how cheaply Nell Gwyn got her oranges!). In the 18th century, it concentrates on the slave trade, that is on cheap labor in the plantations, and the merchants of Liverpool go their psalms, and those of Bourdeux to mass, on the miseries of their sugar-growing slaves. In the 19th century the export of capital becomes the dominant form, together with the derivative pressures of unequal trade, while later, as raw materials become a steadily increasing share of manufacturing costs, the monopolization of these is added. When, as in Germany in the 1930s demonstrates, these forms of relief are more painfully obtained, then the imperialist forms vary according to the acuity of need and the want of resources. But the underlying drive remaims the same, the constant pressure on profitability, the need for ever more accumulation to reestablish the former quantity of profits, and this is true, except in acuity of need for all capitalisms, liberal or fascist." Rakesh > >Is this egregious sophistry or are you simply saying that because workers >in the First World have come to expect more they are as likely to feel >exploited? I agree that the class struggle in this country is intensifying, >largely because they have unlearned the lesson of the welfare state. >However, in every sense, Marxian and otherwise, the exploitation of the >people in the Third World is much worse. They have, with respect to >population, a smaller percentage of income and wealth than the workers in >the 1st world, a larger percentage of the surplus they create is >expropriated, they lack even the limited rights of legal redress and >protection from extreme state and other violence that 1st world workers >have, 13 million children (almost all from the 3rd world) die every year of >diseases with 10-cent cures, they are oppressed more by their own elites >and they are oppressed by the 1st world as well, I could go on forever. I >have heard similar statements from many people who call themselves >communists -- either they are extremely naive or extremely dishonest. > In fact, it's pretty clear that the most sever oppression is actually >often more stable than milder forms -- adespotic government is in the >greatest danger when it eases up. > > > > > --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- --- from list marxism-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu --- ------------------
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