[A-List] An introduction to Henryk Grossman

["Charles Brown" <charlesb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From LouPro
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http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/pen-l/2008w11/msg00070.htm
One of the motivations in scheduling a discussion of "crisis theory" in
this online introduction to Marxism class is that it gave me an excuse
to read Rick Kuhn's new biography "Henryk Grossman and the Recovery of
Marxism". I have heard Grossman's name bandied about on various leftwing
mailing lists for the past 10 years and was curious to see what the buzz
was about. Kuhn's book has been a rewarding experience both in terms of
its scholarly treatment of a somewhat neglected figure and as an
important piece of the jigsaw puzzle of capitalist crisis.

This puzzle is of course all the more compelling given the events of
the past few months. A Lexis-Nexis search on "1929? for articles within
the last 3 months yields 992 hits! Here's something from one right off
the top:

How will new Fed chairman Ben Bernanke's handling of the current crisis
compare to Greenspan's record? The big worry is that the collapse in
share prices has been accompanied by a banking crisis. With hundreds of
billions of sub-prime mortgage losses yet to surface, most banks have
given up lending to one another. This has inevitably invited comparisons
with what happened between 1929 and 1933.

As against that, Bernanke has cut US interest rates four times since
last September. They now stand at just 3.5 per cent as against 5.25 per
cent when the crisis first began. And the Fed isn't done cutting yet,
with a further rate cut, possibly to three per cent, likely before the
end of the month. While there is a chance that things could go terribly,
horribly wrong, the likelihood is that cheaper money will limit the
effects of any economic downturn.


        ?Irish Independent, January 26, 2008

Rick Kuhn has been devoted to re-establishing Grossman's reputation
since 1993. His preface gives reasons why. Part of it was personal. Like
Grossman, Kuhn's Jewish parents had to flee Nazi-controlled territory in
1938 and 1939. (Grossman made it out of Europe safely, but his wife, son
and many other relatives were killed by the Nazis.)

But the main reason was what Grossman had to contribute on Marxist
economics, which was of great importance to Kuhn's peers, including
Anwar Shaikh, whose "excellent survey of Marxist crisis theory provided
a sympathetic account of Grossman's position." This survey of course was
the text around which I focused my first post on this topic.

One of Kuhn's first forays into the area of Grossman studies appeared
in the Summer 1995 edition of Science and Society. It was titled
"Capitalism's collapse: Henryk Grossman's Marxism". The second paragraph
is about as key to the discussion that we have been having on this topic
as anything I have read anywhere:

Capitalism does many horrible things to people. It generates radical
differences in income and wealth, with starvation on one side and
immense luxury on the other. It alienates us from each other, and from
our natural capacities ? for work and even for sexual pleasure. The
system reproduces itself by dividing humanity along arbitrary lines of
nation, gender, race, religion and sexual orientation. Its wars
periodically massacre huge numbers of people. All of these provide bases
for socialist critiques of the capitalist mode of production. But if
capitalism can go on forever, increasing the production of wealth all
the time, then in principal economic problems, at least, could either be
overcome through working-class action to reallocate wealth or
ameliorated into unpleasant but bearable irritants. In these
circumstances, Grossmann argues, the working class could just as easily
reconcile itself with capitalism as voluntaristically attempt to realize
socialism.

full:
http://louisproyect.wordpress.com/2008/03/21/an-introduction-to-henryk-grossman/