Re: Re: US Consumer Confidence index surges

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

>That is probably because Marxists have lost self-confidence in our
>own political tradition.  Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky, etc. used to
>argue that humanity can do better than even what the *best* of
>capitalism can offer.  Many of us today, in contrast, sound as if
>Marxism can be *no competition* to capitalism in *boom times* (even
>though the neoliberal recovery has been a *paltry* one).  *If* the
>only virtue of Marxism were that it's better than the Great
>Depression, the working class would be correct not to take interest
>in it.
>
>Yoshie

I have an entirely different take on the question. What I believe the
differences are about can best be understood by comparison with the battles
inside the Second International with Rosa Luxemburg on one side and Eduard
Bernstein on the other. In the late 1800s capitalism experienced a
prolonged expansionary phase which led many Marxists to believe that
something qualitatively had changed. "Evolutionary socialism" was premised
on the belief that the institutions of monopoly capitalism could be
gradually transformed into socialism by expanding the power of the working
class through peaceful, legal parliamentary and trade union activity.

Luxemburg argued that the rising standard of living and democratic openings
were largely connected to the rise of imperialism which allowed the class
struggle to be co-opted in countries like England and Germany. While the
Kaiser was instituting the first social security system in modern times, he
was at the same time turning the territory now called Namibia into a
concentration camp, which served as a model for Hitler's camps years later.

Over the past 55 years or so, we have experienced a similar trend. It also
has had a similar disorienting effect. While the Second International of
today has long ago dropped any pretensions to socialism, and while the
Communist Parties have tended to fill the vacuum left by such parties, the
Marxist intelligentsia has worked overtime to restyle a Bernsteinian
worldview suitable for the modernist and postmodernist epoch. As Ellen
Meiksins Wood has pointed out, the growth of postmodernism can be directly
linked to the bull market that kicked in during the early 1980s. By the
same token, postmodernism has begun to lose strength because of the
difficulty of sustaining illusions in a permanent boom, especially in the
financial markets.

Some of the Marxist sects tend to adopt a "worse the better" kind of
catastrophism. Despite their "stopped clock is right once a day"
tendencies, there is useful information to be gleaned from something like
Ted Grant's "In defense of Marxism" website which specializes in this sort
of thing. (http://www.marxist.com/)

But in reality, the broader issues are about the continuing relevance of
some of Marx's core theoretical precepts, especially the declining rate of
profit. Frankly, I find much of the chatter about the NASDAQ rather
limited. It does tend to look at the stock markets as some kind of rectal
thermometer that can be used to determine the health of the patient.

What I find much more interesting is the changes in the American economy
brought on by deregulation, which have reached something of a climax in the
rolling blackouts in California. The real question for Marxists and
progressive economists is whether this tendency is some kind of momentary
abberation brought on by the machinations of crooked capitalists or
something more intrinsic to the system. I am of the opinion that such
tendencies are as central to the operations of the US economy as
unemployment is to the post-USSR economy and for many of the same reasons
that I will explore in detail when I post something here on airline
deregulation.




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