I am glad to see you coming in on this, but I fear that the reference is in practice inaccessible for me. It is not only my slow German, which can sometimes see a translation problem but cannot answer it confidently, especially the nuances. It is also IMO that the German marxist literature is far in advance of the English. That does not mean it is always correct, but my understanding is that over the last 20 years there have been a substantial number of serious marxist journals published in German with cross fertilization between them, which may go into a subject in a depth not really known in English. For example articles shared in marxism-space a couple of years ago on the opposition trend in the KPD as early as 1923.
You can see the problem by the limited number of responses on Rubin, despite the fact that the work has been available in English for 25 years and has gone through four printings.
But you ask also:
>Chris, why *I.I.* Rubin today? You know the reconstruction of scientific
>socialism is not a matter of indifference to me, but given the continuous
>turmoil on the international financial markets - shouldn't we know more
>about Robert Rubin at the moment?
I gave my perspectives in my letter on the global melodrama. Robert Rubin is only semi-conscious, part of the phenomena by which the workings of the capitalist system is responding to the latest crisis. I.I Rubin may be wrong but he was at least conscious.
What I am interested in is seeing global Value as an overall system, with subsystems that only partly interpenetrate. I increasingly think this is the answer to unequal exchange.
Now whether the labour of tribes in Amazon rain forest is part of global Value, may be important for the actual preservation of the rain forest. Andrew Kliman and one or two others who I cannot dismiss, say I cannot stretch Marx to that meaning. Rubin appears to have discussed the intricacies of Marx's analysis in more detail than many. If Value is the content of the form, exchange value, is its substance necessarily limited to expression through exchange value?
The question is of even greater political urgency. Talk of Russian economic meltdown is sensational, but not impossible to rule out. Say Yeltsin falls. Suppose he is replaced after riots, by Zhughanov (sp?). Z will still have to negotiate with the IMF.
In practical political terms the theory makes a big difference. Could the terms of the debate can be shifted from hegemonic neo-liberal ones, that all that matters is money, to how can the labour power get producing again most rapidly, and able to circulate its products, without having to wait several years for international capital to build up confidence enough to invest in Russia.
A political line based on structural reforms could be arguable: certainly Russia will need IMF loans, but they could be based on producing rapid employment in something analogous to the Chinese town and village enterprises sector, one of the most dynamic areas of the Chinese economy. If the Russian government has an acute problem of raising revenue, why not have land policy on the agenda? Neo-liberalism will just persist in arguing that everything should be brought under bourgeois property relations as rapidly as possible. But a feasability case could be made for keeping land under social ownership but charging rent directly to the government, as in Hong Kong (which BTW seems to have passed its test yesterday).
Compare south Africa, where before free elections marxists and left-wingers did very serious work on an economic programme that would have invested from bottom up in the labour of the mass of the population. It would have been risky in terms of insulating the country from the pressures of global finance, but when you look at the state of the Rand today, it might not have been any worse than what was put in place.
If Zhughanov has no rigorous policy which which to negotiate with the IMF then every man in Russia could seize weapons, as they did recently in Albania, and it will still not be possible to provide a qualitatively different answer to neo-liberalism.
Now this is a task of theory. I do not belittle mathematically based models but they have to be worked out by specialists. There is a technical job to be done of refuting plodding critics of Marxism who often seem to me to attack the theory mechanically and expect a closer correspondence between labour time and price, than can be the case.
The wider theoretical question is of fundamental importance. How to we shift the agenda to people and societies? Marx argued that money is a social relationship. If we do not have an overarching sense of the Value of the use values produced by the life process of any society, including activities in the informal, cooperative, or state sector, how can we point to a higher truth than that carried by the emissaries of the International Monetary Fund.
Marx's theory of value is also the cornerstone of his criticism of capitalism. Some who toil in the saltmines may appear unduly scholastic, but the task is fundamental to re-eastablishing the relevance of marxism to present events.
That is why I think, paradoxically, that I. Rubin may have more insights on this, than R. Rubin.
Regards/Gruesse
Chris
At 08:22 AM 8/18/98 +0200, you wrote:
>At 11:19 16.08.98 +0100, Chris Burford wrote:
>
>>What should I know about Rubin. I.I. Rubin, that is.
>
>If there is anybody on this list who will sacrifice himself/herself
>transcribing the article I am quoting below into html or translating it
>into English I will be fond of xeroxing it.
>
>Hinrich Kuhls
>
>
>For a concise critique of Rubin's interpretation of Marx' theory see the
>following article (yes, it has been published as far back as 1975):
>
>Projekt Klassenanalyse
>Zur Debatte ueber das System der Kritik der Politischen Oekonomie in der
>UdSSR. Rubins Interpretation der Marxschen Theorie. (On the Discussion
>about the System of Critique of Political Economy in the USSR. Rubin's
>Interpretation of Marx' Theory)
>in: Dialektik der Kategorien. Debatte in der UdSSR (1927-1929)
>(Dialectics of Categories. A Discussion in the USSR [1927-1929]),
>West-Berlin: VSA-Verlag 1975, pp. 137-190.
>
>It refers to the following writings and discussion contributions:
>
>I. I. Rubin:
>Ocerki po teorii stoimosti Marksa
>(Essays on Marxist Theory of Value)
>1st edition Moscow 1924,
>3rd ed. Moscow 1928; this one was translated into American English (1972).
>A German translation has been published in 1973.
>
>I. I. Rubin:
>Abstraktny trud i stoimost w sisteme Marksa,
>(Abstract Labour and Value in Marx' System)
>in: Pod Znamenem Marksizma, Moscow 1927, v. 6, p.88-119
>(Under the Flag of Marxism)
>
>I. I. Rubin, S.A. Bessonow et al.,
>Dialekticheskoe razvitie kategorii v ekonomicheskoi sisteme Marksa
>(Dialectical Development of Categories in Marx' Economical System)
>in: Problemi ekonomiki, 1929, v. 4/5, p. 203-238
>
>Both articles/contributions have been republished (translated into German)
in:
>
>I. I. Rubin, S.A. Bessonow et al.,
>Dialektik der Kategorien. Debatte in der UdSSR (1927-1929)
>(Dialectics of Categories. A Discussion in the USSR [1927-1929]),
>West-Berlin 1975
>
>