Re: [Pen-l] Walden Bello on the coming capitalist consensus

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

A couple weeks ago on lbo-talk I argued that "Progress" (or the Idea of
Progress) was a reactionary concept. an ideological barrier to the
development of socialist thought. (I don't think it an accident, for
example, that The Great Progressive, T.R., thought all strikers should
be treated as the French had treated the Communards after the fall of
the Commune.) The Idea of Progress has its roots in the 18th century but
its flourishing in the Victorian Age, and it is inseparable from the
delusion of history as teleology. Capitalism becomes only one more
"stage" in the Onward March of Humanity towards a Better World, with
nothing left for individuals OR Movements to do than to occasionally oil
the machinery. The Idea of Progress, I believe, was what kept the late
Jim Blaut from understanding what Capitalsim was. He saw it only as an
intensification of  this Onward March of humanity: thus his grotesque
Wevberian conception that grounding the origin of capitalism in Europe
was to claim superiority for Europeans rather than to see them also as
the victim of a terrible explosion.

The difference between Charles and Patrick in the exchange below is
precisely that Charles is a victim of the Idea of Progress, that we can
get to heaven in a rocking chair, while Patrick sees capitalism for what
it is, a terrible force that will destroy us all unless we destroy it
first.

Carrol

Patrick Bond wrote:
> 
> Charles Brown wrote:
> > CB: Generally, Marxists see "globalization" as laying the groundwork for socialism, just as capitalist monopoly lays the groundwork in another way. Marx conceived of  Communism as a world system, a "centralized" or holistic world economy and as retaining the One World, One Species aspects of "capitalist globalization" .
> 
> Can I try this, instead?:
> 
> Generally, Marxists see "globalization" and "imperialism" as delaying
> the groundwork for socialism, just as globalization delays the
> establishment of a "One World, One Species" capitalism, thanks to uneven
> and combined development, which immiserises by maintaining aspects of
> the non-capitalist world that are profitable for superexploitation.
> According to Marx,
> 
>     The discovery of gold and silver in America, the extirpation,
>     enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population,
>     the turning of Africa into a commercial warren for the hunting of
>     black skins signalled the rosy dawn of the era of capitalist
>     production. These idyllic proceedings are the chief momenta of
>     primitive accumulation. On their heels treads the commercial war of
>     the European nations, with the globe for a theatre.[1]
> 
> Generalising upon this insight, Luxemburg observed,
> 
>     Force, fraud, oppression, looting are openly displayed without any
>     attempt at concealment, and it requires an effort to discover within
>     this tangle of political violence and contests of power the stern
>     laws of the economic process. Bourgeois liberal theory takes into
>     account only the former aspect: ‘the realm of peaceful competition’,
>     the marvels of technology and pure commodity exchange; it separates
>     it strictly from the other aspect: the realm of capital’s blustering
>     violence which is regarded as more or less incidental to foreign
>     policy and quite independent of the economic sphere of capital. In
>     reality, political power is nothing but a vehicle for the economic
>     process. The conditions for the reproduction of capital provide the
>     organic link between these two aspects of the accumulation of
>     capital. The historical career of capitalism can only be appreciated
>     by taking them together. ‘Sweating blood and filth with every pore
>     from head to toe’ characterizes not only the birth of capital but
>     also its progress in the world at every step, arid thus capitalism
>     prepares its own downfall under ever more violent contortions and
>     convulsions… Militarism fulfils a quite definite function in the
>     history of capital, accompanying as it does every historical phase
>     of accumulation. It plays a decisive part in the first stages of
>     European capitalism, in the period of the so-called ‘primitive
>     accumulation’, as a means of conquering the New World and the
>     spice-producing countries of India. Later, it is employed to subject
>     the modern colonies, to destroy the social organizations of
>     primitive societies so that their means of production may be
>     appropriated, forcibly to introduce commodity trade in countries
>     where the social structure had been unfavourable to it, and to turn
>     the natives into a proletariat by compelling them to work for wages
>     in the colonies. It is responsible for the creation and expansion of
>     spheres of interest for European capital in non-European regions,
>     for extorting railway concessions in backward countries, and for
>     enforcing the claims of European capital as international lender.
>     Finally, militarism is a weapon in the competitive struggle between
>     capitalist countries for areas of non-capitalist civilization.[2]
> 
> [1]. Marx, K. (1867)[2005], Das Kapital, available at
> http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch31.htm.
> 
> [2]. Luxemburg, R. (1968)[1923], The Accumulation of Capital, New York,
> Monthly Review Press. See www.marxists.org/archive/
> luxemburg/1913/accumulation-capital/, from which these citations are drawn.
> 
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