Re: Another exchange with Leo Panitch

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mervyn:
> So on all the 'fundamental' issues classical Marxism is forever 'correct'
> -- Marx resolved all the issues of idealism vs materialism, the dynamics
> of the capitalist mode of production, etc once and for all. But Marx
> himself didn't think that and, great human being though he was, wasn't god.

Well, look, I studied philosophy from 1965 to 1967. I encourage everybody
who can find the time to read Plato, Descartes, Kant and Hegel. These are
some of the great works of western civilization. (But you should of course
make sure to look at the Bhagvad-Gita and other non-European classics as
well.) That being said, Marxism is a radical departure from idealist
philosophy. It ties together French and English materialism with Hegelian
dialectics. I'm okay with that myself.

As far as the dynamics of the capitalist mode of production, there seems to
be lots of room for new insights. For example, David Harvey came up a way
of looking at the *spatial* dimensions of capital accumulation out of his
experience as a geographer. But that's all within the context of Marxism.
What people like Hardt and Negri were doing in "Empire"--on the other
hand--was an insult to Marxist research. In the course of over 400 pages
repudiating the Marxist theory of imperialism, they supplied less data than
can be found in Wordsworth poem.

> This is not correct. Marx was fired up by Hegel's philosophy (without
> which, as I've said, his own theories could not have been thought) and
> after his early immersion in it, he revisited it for new inspiration
> periodically throughout his life and in  particular 1857 when Hegel's
> doctrine of the Notion in The Logic inspired the Grundrisse and in 1867
> when the doctrine of Essence in The Logic inspired Capital Vol 1 and its
> movement from phenomenal forms to essential relations.

And Lenin had time to read Hegel himself. It was the dialectics that they
were interested in, not the idealist prattle about Spirit.

> Instead of viewing classical Marxism as incorrible and fixed, why not see
> it as developing and dynamic? This is surely the dialectical attitude, as
> well as the scientific one (same thing, ultimately) - Darwinian biology
> didn't stand still with Darwin's death, nor Einsteinian physics with
> Einstein's, etc. Since the world, especially the social world, is in
> process (the dialectical view) any theory that is frozen must necessarily
> end up in the dustbin of history.

I suppose I can go along with this, but I draw the line at John Holloway
who tells the left to emulate the EZLN. The left needs to study victories,
not failures.


> 1. This is just knocking and mocking. How can you ever succeed in building
> a broad-based movement to overthrow capitalism on that basis? No social or
> theoretical movement is ever just crap. There's always some positive
> things in it that are worth listening to and thinking about, and also on
> the Marxist theory of ideology a real basis to it which is worth
> analysing, i.e. you need to find out why it appeals to real people.

Sorry, but I have read Deleuze-Guattari, Negri and Holloway at this point.
And it is all crap. Overblown prose, unsubstantiated assertions, and
politically reactionary. During the Iraq war, Negri's writing partner
Michael Hardt urged the movement to embrace "Empire" and reject
"imperialism", which amounted to lining up behind France and company.
Looking at what's going on in the Congo now, one wonders how Hardt can call
himself a communist.

> 2. Holloway himself has developed a specifically *dialectical* critique of
> autonomism (*Historical Materialism vol 10 no 1, 2002, in a review of
> Empire: 'Going in the wrong direction: or, Mephistopheles -- not St
> Francis of Assisi', pp. 79-92) in which he criticizes it for offering a
> purely positive theory instead of a 'negative' one, so to refer to him in
> an unqualified way as an autonomist and to dismiss him as an autonomist is
> hardly appropriate.

He is not an unqualified autonomist. He mixes a lot of Adorno with Negri.



Louis Proyect, Marxism mailing list: http://www.marxmail.org