Re: introducing ...

["Charles Brown" <CharlesB@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>>> Margaret Trawick <trawick@xxxxxxxxxxxx> 03/02/00 09:15PM >>
True Marxists (correct me if I'm wrong about this) are opposed to
reformism.  They consider that only revolution will do.  But that means
armed conflict, and you have to  have plenty of money to engage in armed
conflict with any degree of credibility these days, so we are really over a
barrel.

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CB: Actually, Marxists are not opposed to struggle for reforms and they do participate in the struggles for reforms.  However, the standard formulation is that we strive to struggle for reforms in a revolutionary manner. That is, try to demonstrate from the failure of a reform struggle or the INEVITABLE reversal of reforms ( such as the Reaganite reversal of the New Deal reforms in the U.S., the whole reversal of social democracy in Europe ) that only revolutionary change will really and fully solve the problems that the reforms aim at. Of course, there is a lot of debate and argument as to when some Marxists have fallen off into opportunism in participating in reforms, but Marxisms do not reject participation in reformist struggles on principle. In fact, it demands participation in reforms on principle.

The overwhelming advantage that the imperialists and bourgeoisie have in arms today puts us back into a situation comparable to the days of Marx or Lenin, when the bourgeoisie also had an overwhelming advantage in this regard. However, contra bourgeois distortion, Marxism does not rely on terror and armed struggle as a first resort. The first goal of communists is to win over the overwhelming majority of the population to revolution, including "soldiers soviets".   At the time of the armed struggle led by Castro in Cuba, the Cuban Communist Party opposed that armed struggle. Right or wrong in that concrete situation that opposition was based on the principle I am stating: reaching for a gun first is not the Marxist approach, although the bourgeoisie , of course, try to spread that image.

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However, I think that perhaps present-day Marxists (and again, correct me
if I'm wrong) do not acknowledge the changes that the entity they call
capital has undergone in the past century.  It could be that in the long
view, capital is not an enduring entity, it is just a flash in the pan.
"Non-imaginary money does not exist,"  says my kid the wonk, and placing my
faith in kids, I believe him. There is no longer any such thing as real
money.  Once there was.  Now there isn't.  Money has turned into all smoke
and mirrors.  Money is just a collective hallucination, a literal ghost of
its former self.

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CB:  You and your kid may be correct, but if you are inquiring what is the Marxist conception of money , Hugh is good on that one. Anyway Marx notes five functions for money: measure of value, means of circulation, means of accumulation or hoarding, means of payment, universal money. these functions seem still in operation , even if in imaginary form. Perhaps your child is thinking of "cash". Of course, credit has gone wild these days.

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And yet the power of money is even greater than when it actually existed.
Many people are starving, and even as they starve, they trade what bread
they have for guns, and those who end up with the bread are the ones who
are selling the guns, and they somehow turn this bread into the
smoke-and-mirrors of money. What do they do with this stuff?   To all
appearances,  their money controls them, rather than the reverse.  But
money has no agency, no consciousness.  It does not even exist.   The whole
situation is absolutely surreal when you think about it.

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CB: In _Capital_, Marx discusses commodity fetishism, wherein subjects become objects and objects become subjects, or subject and object are reversed;  Relationships between people as producers are represented as relationships between things.

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Having been outside of America for some time, I have almost forgotten what
it is like to live there.   I remember that the  problem with the dems and
the reps is frustrating, because it seems like there is no way for a
different point of view to even gain a foothold in DC.  But whether you
have a two-party system or whether you have a multi-party system, you can
still have a ruling class and a great polarization between the rich and the
poor.  And the rich can make total mincemeat of the poor, and the poor can
do nothing about it.  When they try, they get even more minced.

Some people I know who do this - very poor kids who take up arms against
corrupt and exploitative governments - are in the same league as that
Grannie D.  They may not say it, but quietly they seem aware that their
cause is probably lost.  What they do say is that they will die soon
whether they fight or not, so they might as well die fighting for a good
cause.  A meaningful death, they call it.

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CB:  They have admirable courage and idealism.


CB