Re: Reply to David Schanoes

["dmschanoes" <dmschanoes@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jurriaan Bendien" <bendien@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "Marxmail List" <marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Saturday, August 30, 2003 12:54 PM
Subject: Reply to David Schanoes


> Capital formation statistically refers to net additions to fixed assets,
but
> this is only a small part of capital.
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dms: Correct.  But your argument was that the general "plethora" of capital
indicated there was no crisis, other than in the minds of the middle.  The
predicament of capital is created exactly by its expansion, its fixed asset
formation, rates of which in the 90s were significantly higher than in the
previous 30 years.
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>
> ""Frenzied" overproduction in relation to what, exactly ?
____________________

dms: Try telecommunications, fiber optics, semiconductors, steel, coffee,
hog production (definitely in the US), copper, oil, for example, and their
production in relation to the rise and fall of.....the rate of profit.
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>
> I claim only that "uneven and combined development" can, and has,
coincided
> with primitive accumulation,
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dms:Where and when?  Please provide the analysis of a concrete historical
manifestation of this, preferably after 1892.  Choice of year mostly
arbitrary.
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.  Preobrazensky's attempt to rationalise
> the exploitation and expropriation of peasants and workers with a theory
of
> "socialist primitive accumulation" leads him into the petty-bourgeois
camp,
> just as Stalin's theory of "socialist industrial accumulation" is a
> petty-bourgeois theory. It is all based on hatred and contempt for the
> workers and peasants.
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dms: That is ridiculous.  All based on  hatred and contempt for workers and
peasants?  In saying that you  substitute moral posturing for analysis of
the actual material circumstances confronting the Soviets after the civil
war and the waning of the international revolution.  Is the "solution"
(actually stopgap measures) proposed and implicit in <The New Economics>
realizable absent the completion of the international revolution?
Absolutely not.  But are the problems articulated in P.'s analysis correct?
Absolutely yes.
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The whole economic discussion of the 1920s about
> whether "socialism in one country" was possible, or not possible, is an
> ideological red herring.
_____________________________
dms: What do you mean?  It was really a debate about the importance of
international revolution to the resolution of the Soviet predicament.
__________________________


> I have no specific comment to make about primitive accumulation in Mexico,
I
> have not studied it yet, and cannot say yet whether I will do so. I would
> have to see the relevance of it.
_________________________

The relevance is that it is NOT primitive acccumulation.
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> If capitalist social relations break down, and some fascist barbarian
> plunders the bodies and property of other people, then this is a source of
> primitive accumulation,
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dms:  Absurd.  It is exactly not primitive accumulation.  It is enabled by
advanced capitalism, not vice versa, a la souveniering.
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