Re: Another exchange with Leo Panitch

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mervyn Hartwig wrote:
> I'm particularly interested in this because you seem to be veering close 
> to using a similar tactic on John Holloway, in the context of 
> encouraging pretty indiscriminate academic-bashing.

What are you talking about? I have criticized Holloway not because he is 
an academic, but because he is attacking the fundamental ideas of 
Marxism. In any case, you will have ample opportunity to defend him 
after I post my critique.

Just a word or two on the question of academia, however. I think that 
academics can do good work. For example, they can use their scholarly 
skills to shed light on shifting class relations that account for 
explosions such as the Central American revolution. In particular, I 
reommend the work of Robert F. Williams who has written about the role 
of the coffee and cattle sectors in peasant radicalization.

I also strongly recommend the work of David Gibbs, who is a Political 
Science professor at the U. of Arizona. His "Origins of the Yugoslav 
Conflict" is about as informative as you can find anywhere: 
http://www.gened.arizona.edu/dgibbs/Yugo-article2.pdf

That being said, I am trying to identify an entirely different set of 
issues which revolve around challenges to Marxism *in the name of 
Marxism*, most of which *do* arise from within the academy. I have tried 
to reply to them as time and importance dictate over the years, whether 
it comes from Zizek or from whoever. In general, I think that left-based 
academic research should focus on providing information of value to the 
revolutionary movement. I am much more skeptical of "theorizing", 
whether it is Leo Panitch talking about the tasks of socialists or John 
Holloway trying to advise the mass movement how to be more successful. 
Stuff like this is empty calories in my opinion. Let's compare them side 
by side:

Gibbs:
In recent years, it has become fashionable to view Yugoslav communism as 
a failure, whose eventual collapse was inevitable. Such interpretations 
are contradicted by basic economic statistics. In fact, Yugoslav 
communism was associated, for most of its history, with
economic dynamism...Yugoslavia sustained a respectable rate of GDP 
growth, which averaged 8.8 percent during the period 1956-64, and 6.0 
percent during 1965-72. Growth was both “extensive,” in terms of
investment in physical and social infrastructure as well as “intensive,” 
as reflected in improved labor productivity. Though these figures would 
later decline and then regress – a matter we will discuss shortly – the 
earlier period was strongly positive. The positive performance and 
growth of Yugoslavia’s economy during this period is generally 
acknowledged. And this growth brought major improvements to the 
population. British historian Basil Davidson commented that, under
communism, “Schooling flourished for the first time. Health and other 
public services got amazingly better than anything imaginable before.”

Panitch:
The socialist 'utopian goal' is built around realizing our potential to 
be full human beings. What separates this ideal from its liberal roots 
is not only socialism's commitment to extending this principle to all 
members of society, but also its insistence that the flowering of human 
capacities isn't a liberation of the individual from the social, but is 
only achievable through the social. Ideals are always linked to some 
notion of justice and freedom. Notions of justice revolve around the 
egalitarianism of certain outcomes (like distribution of income or 
wealth) or the legitimacy of a process for reaching goals even if the 
ultimate results are unequal (equal access to opportunities). Notions of 
freedom generally divide into freedom from an external arbitrary 
authority (the state) or the freedom to participate in setting the broad 
parameters that frame the context of our lives (as in current liberal 
democracies). The socialist ideal does not exclude these other moral 
spaces, but locates them on the specific terrain of capacities: 
capitalism is unjust and undemocratic not because of this or that 
imperfection in relation to equality or freedom, but because at its core 
it involves the control by some of the use and development of the 
potential of others, and because the competition it fosters frustrates 
humanity's capacity for liberation through the social.

full: http://www.yorku.ca/socreg/ (look for article in issue 2000)

Holloway:
It is a question not of Revolution, but also not just of rebellion: it 
is a question of revolution. Revolution (with a capital "R"), understood 
as the introduction of change from above, does not work. Rebellion is 
the struggle of dignity and will exist as long as dignity is negated. 
But it is not enough. We rebel because we rebel, because we are human. 
But we do not want just to struggle against the negation of dignity, we 
want to create a society based upon the mutual recognition of dignity. 
Our struggle, then, is not the struggle of Revolution, not just of 
rebellion, but of revolution. Not just rebellion, not Revolution but 
revolution. But what does it mean and how do we do it? In this 
revolutionary struggle, there are no models, no recipes, just a 
desperately urgent question. Not an empty question but a question filled 
with a thousand answers.

Fissures: these are the thousand answers to the question of revolution. 
Everywhere there are fissures. The struggles of dignity tear open the 
fabric of capitalist domination. When people stand up against the 
construction of the airport in Atenco, when they oppose the construction 
of the highway in Tepeaca, when they stand up against the Plan Puebla 
Panama, when the students of the UNAM oppose the introduction of fees, 
when workers go on strike to resist the introduction of faster rhythms 
of work, they are saying "NO, here no, here capital does not rule!" Each 
No is a flame of dignity, a crack in the rule of capital. Each No is a 
running away, a flight from the rule of capital.

No is the starting point of all hope. But it is not enough. We say No to 
capital in one area, but it keeps on attacking us, separating us from 
the wealth we create, denying our dignity as active subjects. Yet our 
dignity is not so easily denied. The No has a momentum that carries us 
forward.

full: http://slash.autonomedia.org/analysis/03/01/28/1336251.shtml



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