a false dichotomy: economic vs. political issues [was:Darwin's God]

[Jim Devine <jdevine03@xxxxxxxxx>]

me, then:
> > a) "riding the wave of economic crisis" is crap. M&E and many other
> > old socialists only saw crises as a small part of the process, helping
> > to raise consciousness (as it were). The important part was the
> > development of the self-organized & class-conscious working class.
> >
> > b) the idea that the states in the rich countries have managed the
> > crisis is naive. Rather, it's a matter of unplanned effects of
> > military Keynesianism and (to a lesser extent), the welfare state.
> > Almost all active policy involves muddling through in the dark. In
> > addition, it's not that crises were minimized as much as their worst
> > impacts were shifted to the poorer countries in the world.

Yoshie, now:
> The welfare state, military Keynesianism, shifting to the poorer
> countries, etc. all have had the same effect in the sense that crises
> like the Great Depression have not happened in the West and may not
> happen again here.

with so-called "globalization" (i.e., the second phase of
international capitalist integration, from approximately the 1970s,
after the first one of the 19th century), the difference between the
rich countries and the poor countries is fading. (The class
differences within the countries aren't fading, obviously, but are
getting more extreme.) So this rosy scenario seems quite limited in
its validity.

We're moving more and more into a situation where a world state is
needed and the absence of such a state itself causes problems of
economic management. (The IMF, for example, does NOT play the role of
being a "world Fed.") Ironically, the Bushwhackers are trying to solve
the problem in their own way, by declaring the US state to be the
world state. This effort is itself fading.

> M&E consciously rejected the path of utopian socialism and coming up
> with a blueprint for new socialist society.  But M&E didn't have much
> to say about (A) how the self-organized & class-conscious working
> class could develop and (B) how that development might lead into
> transition to socialism either, in contrast to far more intellectual
> energy expended on explaining commodity fetishism, the mechanism of
> surplus value extraction, contradictions of capitalism, why crises are
> inherent in capitalism, etc.

it's true that M&E tended to see the development of a "self-organized
& class-conscious working class" as somewhat automatic, extrapolating
from the trends of their own time (the development of the German SD
party, the class struggles in France, etc.) They also hoped that they
could trust the working class to do part B itself rather than having
some intellectuals tell them how to do it. Thus, M&E's most concrete
discussions of what socialism mean were based directly on actual
working-class practice (the Paris Commune, the Gotha Program).

But since Lenin, these questions have been discussed a lot. People
like E.P. Thompson and the "new social historians" have added a lot of
information to our knowledge of this subject. It's not like there has
not been a debate. One major problem was that until 1991 or so, many
leftists thought that part of the world had already made the
transition to socialism, which stifled a lot of discussion. Then, with
the fall of Stalinism and social democracy, along with the
acceleration of globalization under the guidance of a monopolar
superpower, people have become demoralized.

As for the "far more intellectual energy expended on explaining
commodity fetishism, the mechanism of surplus value extraction,
contradictions of capitalism, why crises are  inherent in capitalism,
etc.," it's been pointed out before -- by Perry Anderson among others
-- that such subjects tend to dominate when Marxist intellectuals have
no social movements to relate to (and to learn from). (Since
intellectuals were never the main force behind such movements, they
can't be blamed completely, IMHO. Perhaps it shows a weakness of
character, but some with really strong character moved toward strident
dogmatism. Isolated intellectuals tend to have weak characters -- or
excessively defensive ones -- when their cut off from a social
movement. )

Even when the German SD party was at its height as a social movement
(before 1914), the intellectuals of the party argued about such
matters. After all, it's what intellectuals do, when they're not
arguing about literary criticism, the meaning and role of Sigmund
Freud, the value of postmodernism and post-postmodernism and
post-post-modernism, deconstruction,  the role of intellectuals in the
movement, etc., etc. Intellectuals by their very nature talk about
ideas. It's what they're paid to do -- or if they're not paid, it's
part of their self-identification as human beings.

As I said before, I see no contradiction between talking about
"commodity fetishism, the mechanism of surplus value extraction,
contradictions of capitalism, why crises are  inherent in capitalism,
etc." and also talking about purely political issues (where
"political" is broadly defined). I reject the idea of an either/or
here and I don't understand why Yoshie posited it.

<ellipsis>

Yoshie, then:
> > > So, if today's socialists in the
> > > West still contemplate transition to socialism ...,
> > > we have to think about ways of getting there without
> > > going through anything like the Great Depression.

me:
> > good idea. How are you going to do it?

Yoshie, now:
> I'm proposing it as a topic of discussion, rather than claiming that I
> have an answer.

well, how about suggesting a tentative one so that people can discuss
it. You don't have to believe in it 100%. Abstract criticism of people
for not posing answers to such questions doesn't solve anything.
Abstract criticism of people for not posing answers to such questions
coupled with not posing answers oneself seems contradictory at best.

<ellipsis>

me, then:
> > I agree with this environmentalist problem (and the difficulties it
> > creates for Marx's original vision) but we were talking about POT [peak oil theory].
> > Does its popularity arise from the "exhaustion of crisis theory" as
> > Yoshie suggested in before? whose "crisis theory"? which "crisis
> > theory"?

Yoshie:
> I'm thinking of debates over underconsumption vs. overproduction and
> things like those.  Some of the crisis theory debates in the past
> originally had some political implications, with regard to what to
> think of Keynesian economics, how to explain imperialism, and so on.
> But it seems like debate on Keynesian vs. Marxist economics has become
> virtually moot as just about everyone in the West has become basically
> social democratic in practice (and if that's the political
> destination, Keynes makes a lot of sense), and attempts to get a
> theory of imperialism out of the laws of motion of capitalism seem to
> have petered out.  Hence my claim that crisis theory has exhausted
> itself.

I get the feeling that you just don't want to discuss political
economics, Yoshie. Maybe talking about economic issues is boring to
non-economists, but broad generalizations of the sort in the paragraph
above don't help at all. They're talking about economics without
presenting any content.

Or maybe the problem is that you don't like political-economic
_theory_, as opposed to empiricist explorations like finding
economics-related stories on-line and then posting them to pen-l.

If you don't want to hear about economic issues or "commodity
fetishism, the mechanism of surplus value extraction, contradictions
of capitalism, why crises are inherent in capitalism, etc." that are
posted on pen-l and other leftist lists, you don't have to read them.
Just as many people stopped reading your posts on some country in the
middle east whose name I've forgotten and their alleged Prince, you
can stop reading the posts on topics you don't like. There's no need
for pen-l to dedicate all of its missives to topics that any specific
person likes.

This thread reminds me of an URPE member who argued (back in the
1970s, I believe) that URPE should dedicate all its resources to
policy issues (i.e., what the state we don't have any say with should
do about economic issues). I told her: okay, do policy research! but
why does the whole organization have to follow along? (Of course, now
policy analysis is all the rage among left economists, but I'm still
not a slave to fashion.)
--
Jim Devine / "The truth is more important than the facts." -- Frank Lloyd Wright