But first the degree of progress in Louis Proyect's post of
At 02:44 PM 11/7/98 -0500
And then Doug Henwood's more analytical comments on this thread.
>Chris Burford:
>>I would put the much more interesting challenge to Louis: does he accept
>>that the prospects for a revolution in the near future in the US are slim?
>
>I have no idea. In the meantime I have no plans to promote illusions in
>bourgeois parties like you do. The main thing Marxists have a
>responsibility for is drawing a class line between the workers and the
>bosses, not fudging it the way that you do.
Well, I find this is pretty weak statement as a way forward. Doug Henwood says, as I do, that there appears to be no likelihood of a revolution in the USA or the UK within the foreseeable future. I cannot imagine why a self-proclaimed Marxist, should hesitate to make such an analysis if the objective balance of forces shows it to be the case. This alone suggests an
idealist distortion of Marxism on Louis Proyect's part.
In the meantime LP has no way tactical way forward for the working class and democratic (small d) forces to accumulate strength. He relies on a moralistic formula about not "crossing class lines" when any serious marxist analysis acknowledges the impure nature of class lines, and the permeation of bourgeois and petty bourgeois ideology throughout the society, including of course on this list. The idea that one should try to create a pure proletarian position *in abstract* rather than try to find a practical way forward, reduces marxism to idealism.
Promoting illusions in bourgeois parties is another question, and the best that can said of his position here is that Louis Proyect has repeated the line of demarcation clearly. He has failed to take the debate forward by arguing how it is possible to support a bourgeois party on particular issues without promoting illusions in them. To demonstrate this he would actually have to take the examples I have previously given, and show how it would be possible to acknowledge the relative superiority of one bourgeois party *without* promoting illusions in it.
>
>>Does he accept, without being "fixated on bourgeois elections" certainly in
>>the sense of creating illusions in the trustworthiness of a bourgeois
>>party, that certain steps of financial reform will have to be struggled
>>over, through campaigning, just as in Marx's day, the 10 Hours Bill was won
>>as a valuable reform by working class and democratic struggle?
>
>What you mean by financial reform does not require working-class struggle.
>The bourgeoisie is capable of turning away from the excesses of
>derivatives, currency speculation, etc. on its own. This does not cut into
>their profits the way that a shortening of the work day does. You
>considered the Bretton Woods Agreements as a "financial reform". This
>established the grounds for the IMF and World Bank. My idea of "financial
>reform" is Fidel Castro's call for liquidating 3rd world debts to
>imperialist banks.
>
>>
>>Or does he argue that a reform like the 10 Hours Bill can be a genuine
>>reform, but a financial reform, by definition cannot.
>
>Right. Now, there's progress.
This arbitrary rule for avoiding the complexity of analysing whether a reform is progressive in the actual concrete situation of the balance of class forces, is similar to the attempt to have an apparently simple rule, that you must not "cross class lines".
It is a fact of political struggle at the end of the twentieth century that financial institutions are extremely complex, and their management is highly technical. While societies can revert speedily to a subsistence economy and barter, as has occurred to a widespread degree in Russia, a political programme to take over capital cannot just announce that the banks will be nationalised. Nor, and this is a very important point on which Louis has attacked me, is it possible now for any revolutionary programme in any single country to have much chance of success even in ideal situations without reform of the capitalist system on a global scale.
Does the technical nature of finance mean that is cannot be a target for progressive campaigns? Certainly it is not possible to do much agitation about the technicalities but that does not mean that popular pressure and discontent are not part of the forces that contribute to a reform. The neo-liberals have had to back down in trying to impose a further round of free market changes on Russia. A revolution occurred in Albania, a couple of years ago, but needed much more informed progressive knowledge about how to manage the financial system in the interests of working people rather than the interests of capital.
Within countries like the UK, there are from time to time waves of popular discontent against an aspect of the financial system. For example it became apparent that hundreds of thousands of people were defrauded of a significant portion of their pension rights by biassed unprofessional advice. Many others were incorrectly advised that an endowment mortgage was in their interests. From afar Louis Proyect may say that Gordon Brown's plans to impose a financial and securities regulatory body on the City of London, is a mere reform of capital of no interest to the working class or working people. Ditto for the plans for regulation within the European Union. But Brown has only been able to move forward on this because of the wave of public opinion from working people.
On a global scale the acceptance by capitalism through its adminstrators like Brown and Clinton, that there has to be reform, is of course partly a reform that capitalists are considering very much from their own interests alone, but it is ultra-leftist to say that the protests and refusal of millions of people to accept the blind hand of the market in destroying their lives, is also part of the balance of forces. Behind Louis Proyect's simplistic and idealist political position, as often behind ultra-leftist positions is actually a lack of faith in the mass of working people, and a refusal to look for or, even notice, the indications of an emerging consciousness.
For a real opening in the interests of working people, a lot of work has to be done now by progressive intellectuals. I called through this list for left wing seminars to be set up speedily on alternative reforms of the world financial system. Louis's attempt to characterise my position as *automatically* tailing behind the bourgeoisie will convince fewer and fewer people. Some of the more serious economists on this list are no doubt already looking at the fine print of the official statements and discussing among themselves how they could do better. If Louis Proyect's correspondence on the matter is little more than a repetition of an attempt to censor such work as "crossing class lines", little will be lost by skipping his posts.
It has been suggested to me in a well meant private communication that Louis just gets out of the wrong side of the bed every so often. I do not think that is the case. I used to think that his personalised and arbitrary style of polemic was a result of ignorance about a marxist process of criticism and self-criticism. I now think it is inseparable ideologically from his idealist distortion of marxism.
If marxism is a set of moral principles then it can only be advanced by essentially a moralistic denunciation of those who do not accept your definition of what constitutes the core doctrines of the faith. This is essentially a sectarian idealist distortion of marxism.
__________________
I accept Doug's statement in another post under this thread title.
>>>>
My quasi-endorsement of a kind of market socialism at the end of Wall
Street was based on the sense that you can't get to Utopia just by wishing
it into existence; you have to build on the world that exists. And that
means, to use Diane Elson's phrase, socializing the market. Still, I'm not
happy with the idea except as a transition to something else. But I'm just
a babe in the woods on these issues; I've got a pile of stuff I've been
meaning to read, which I'll get to as soon as I figure out this discourse
thing. Get back to me in a coupla years, Chris.
<<<
I think "socializing the market" is a good working definition, and I think that it will take all of us at least a couple of years. But I feel that debate should happen now, and if Louis Proyect wants to continue calling from the sidelines that it is *by definition* reformist or "supporting bourgeois parties", then he will have to go on trying to convince people of the relevance of his view. Pure repetion will not be worth reading.
Doug also accepted my challenge for more analysis of the crisis in the Republican Party and what it signifies.
>>>>So what is the underlying movement here expressed through the mid-term
>election and the crisis in the Republican, not the Democratic Party?
I think it's yet another manifestation of the depressing centrism of the U.S. electorate, which is itself a function of the constitutional structure (the three branches, the Senate as a consciously obstructive body) and historical practices (restrictive ballot laws, the two-party system, the role of big money in politics). Clinton very successfully co-opted the parts of the Republican agenda - welfare and crime, particularly - leaving them with almost nothing to say, and which goes a long way towards explaining their visceral hostility to the guy. And he did it with the kind of good time Charlie geniality Americans like. That geniality was part of Reagan's success too. You could never call Gingrich or Republican class of 1994 genial. They're mean, often scary people. On top of that, the U.S. ruling class has done very well under Clinton; he's purged the last remnants of the social democratic and civil rights traditions in the Democratic Party. And the ruling class doesn't like the hard-right agenda at all; right after the 1994 election, Fortune ran a cover story on how unpleasant the Republican right was from a big biz/Wall Street point of view. Gingrich is one of the most unpopular political figures in the history of polling - I think his negatives are actually higher than Jesse Jackson's - and the folks to his right are even less popular, except with a hardcore lunatic section of the broad population and the business class. While that may seem like good news for the "left," such as it is, the "left," such as it is, would face the same constitutional and ideological constraints should by some bizarre accident it ever become a strong electoral force.
<<<
While I obviously disagree with Doug, and do think "every little bit counts" and he is unduly pessimistic, I accept many of the structural points here.
A two party system does naturally gravitate to the centre. Much of the time the parties vie to steal each others clothes. But when a whole wardrobe, like Gingrich's Contract with America, gets sent to the second hand department, the terrain shifts by a few centimeters, which should not be beneath our notice.
I do not know the details about Clinton stealing Republican clothes on welfare, but on crime I think marxists should stand back and analyse what Clinton and Blair have done. There is a sense in which their definition of the "third way" is not social democratic, and I agree with Doug's suggestion here. What Blair and Straw, the Home Secretary, have done, is to resonate with the widespread feeling of individual responsibility about crime. Most crimes are actually committed against the working class by working class people (I'll accept a challenge and further information on that, but it is the sort of perspective that radical liberals forget even when they like to think of themselves as marsists). There is something very understandable about peoples gut responses to crime. New Labour has harnessed this not for a rightist individualist agenda, but to emphasise personal responsibility within a *social* context. And they are succeeding in capturing the electorate's perceptions on this.
I do not want to underestimate the risks from a marxist point of view. There are now 20,000 CCTV cameras is London. But what is progressive is that the whole issue is being put in a social context. That we should support.
My question to Nathan, certainly not hostile, but not necessarily in total agreement: (I need to be on guard against contributors like Louis Proyect and Mark Jones, struggling by lumping groups of subscribers they wish to attack, together.) I am interested to read your account of the relatively progressive features of the Clinton administration. But every post by definition is one sided, even if the balance of posts makes for a more all-sided and dialectical dialogue.
How would you demonstrate that your position is not one sided, and does not necessarily entail:
a) being fixated on elections, (crass parliamentarism)
b) tailing after those sections of the bourgeoisie who you think progressive people should temporarily support
c) creating personal illusions in individual bourgeois leaders?
Chris Burford
London.