>This is baffling to me. If the only problem with capital is that ensures
>progress, albeit at a lower than 'potential' rate and with occasional set
>backs, it seems inconceivable to me that the working class would ever
>organize and undertake the risks to overthrow it. Jim, if this expresses
>your understanding of the laws of motion (and your understanding is in
>opposition to Grossmann and Mattick, your self proclaimed heroes), I don't
>see why you don't just throw in the towel, join the Manhattan Institute and
>help Peter Huber with his techno paeans (the one that appeared in the WSJ
>yesterday could have been penned by you).
You make a false counterposition. I said that it would be wrong to deny that there had been any progress in the material conditions of the great mass of people over the last century, and consequently you could not argue that no progress took place under capitalism. (If you disagree with that you should say so.) But I also said that capitalism combined destructive with creative aspects, that capitalism restrained the development of the forces of production (and hence of human development).
This is boiler plate Marxism. Marx himself said that it was wrong to emphasise only the destructive side, as Sisimondi did, you had also to understand the productive side, as Ricardo did. Emphasising either of those to the exclusion of the other would present a false picture. It's a scientific question, as much as it is a moral one. Do you want to tell the truth about what is happening, or just tell yourself a pleasing story of oppressive ogres being beaten by the worthy prince. Look around you? Most of the world is not starving or rebellious. Capitalism is not in a state of permanent crisis. Life expectancy is increasing. If your theory cannot accommodate those facts, as well as those that run in the opposite direction, it fails to have any purchase on the world, it exists for reasons of ideological comfort rather than real understanding.
In message <3.0.6.32.19990819114322.00be2610 at jhuvms.hcf.jhu.edu>, Wojtek Sokolowski <sokol at jhu.edu> writes
>I would take an issue with the characterisation of the market as
>'spontaneous.' That is the characterisation of the market by bourgeois
>political economy, which marx mocked by comparing it to religion: "ours is
>god-given, everyone elses - man made." "Market" is an abstraction, an
>illusion that hides the institutional mechanisms of capitalist rule:
>coprorations, cartels, trusts, government policies etc.
I was not clear. I did not mean that the market was anything other than human activity. But by spontaneous, I mean, without an overarching rational purpose or organisation. It's activities are indeed the sum of many individual, or corporate rational choices, but the sum total is not rational, and often irrational. It is not nature, but, it does have the character of natural law, because it is outside of human consciousness, in its overall operation.
>if, as you argue, the issue is not the existence of surplus per se but its
>distribution,
its not the specific distribution that is exceptionable, but the _form_ of the distribution, ie that it takes the form of an alien force over people, coercing them. (here I take the surplus to be capital, a social relation).
> and if under the capitalist rule that surplus is distributed
>by 'spontaneous' markets - then it is difficult to rebutt the chief claim
>of bourgeois economics that market is a "natural" institution aimed at
>efficiency maximization (pareto optimum).
The idea that what is natural is best always seemed absurd to me. Nature is very bad at efficiency maximisation. Natural means unconscious, outside of rational control.
> hence the marxist claim becomes
>a moral claim at the expense of economic rationality.
To the contrary. Marx takes the claim to economic rationality and shows that it is in fact its opposite, anarchy, the operation of a blind law, behind the backs of the producers, alienated from their conscious control.
> If, otoh, we assume
>that capitalism does not work on the "market" principle but a set of social
>instiutitions designed to keep concentrated surplus in the hands of one
>social class, then the issue is not moral claim versus economic rationality
>anymore, but one moral claim versus another moral claim.
There seems to be an assumption that a corrected market principle would acct against the monopoly of the surplus. Marx's argument was that it is the operation of the law of value that guarantees the monopoly over the means of production.
In message <s7bbdc63.075 at mail.ci.detroit.mi.us>, Charles Brown <CharlesB at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us> writes
>Charles: I don't think that being pro-science necessarily means being an
>anarchist-individualist about the products of science, believing that any and
>all theories and their practices and products advance humanity.
Nor indeed would any scientist.
> an individual or group of scientists might discover some fact, but
>the impact on "us" as a whole may not be progressive. For example, Einstein and
>following physicists discovered some true things-in-themselves, some sure
>enough
>facts, but a main fruit of this has been the poisonness nuclear weapons,
>things-
>against-us, anti-use values.
>we can't afford another discovery by our greatest minds that leads to
>something like nuclear weapons.
Not so. Atomic warfare was not caused by Einstein or science. It was caused by capitalism. Blaming the scientists is a way of letting capitalism off the hook. 'Ignorance never helped anyone', as Marx said to Weitling.
> Scientists have to take the responsibility to
>connect their work to society as a whole, as part of the division of labor of
>the whole human race. They must see that the criterion of truth is not just
>practice in the sense that it works , but it is a transformation of a thing-in-
>itself into a thing-for-us. With the last transformation as important as the
>objective determination of things-in-themselves.
You load onto scientists a responsibility that we have failed. Scientists are not responsible for the way that society is organised. But those of us who see our role as the betterment of society are. It was out failure to provide a better solution than the existing one that left science in the hands of imperialism.
The idea Charles' advances that scientists should fix the results to fit political expediency is one that would blow up in our faces.
>
>Charles: In one sense, trusting the People's decisonmaking is fundamental to a
>democratic attitude. However,
Here it comes, the big however, 'yes I believe in democracy, it's just the people who fuck it up'
>democracy everywhere in bourgeois society,
>including in consumer decisions, is distorted beyond compare.
Beyond compare to what, exactly? Where is the new Jerusalem in which consumer choices are honest and good? And who made you the guardian of good taste and moral rectitude?
> The "votes" of
>consumers, "buyers" or customers are as corrupted as those of most voters in
>elections in the U.S. today.
The voters are corrupted? I had heard the argument that the politicians are corrupted, but its a new one on me that the voters are corrupted. Corrupted with what, exactly? Do the politicians give the voters too much money? Are we to understand that the voters are some kind of exploiting class that lives on its corrupt gains? And here was me thinking that it was the American voters, in the main, who were exploited.
Andrew Hacker points out that between 1975 and 1995, fully four fifths of Americans saw their share of the national income fall. More Americans live in trailer homes and apartments in 1995 than did in 1975, less live in their own homes.
Charles' looks down on the uninformed consumer choices of Americans like some kind of health visitor tut-tutting at the contents of the family fridge. Maybe someone who is working more and more hours just needs that extra beer to take the edge off the day. Maybe a cigarette provides a little solace in this world. It's not for me or you to say that those needs are 'false'. They are as real as anything.
>In this context, the new wants that are created are more and more anti-use
>values , from the objective or social standpoint.
This objective standpoint is one that stands outside of history and society. It is an idealistic construct that any historical materialist would recognise as the reconstitution of religious judgementalism.
> there is
>no rational determination of use-value as social use-value. Marx always has
>"social" in parenthesis when he discusses "use-value".
Nor could there be. Use values are generally private, as consumption is generally a private matter. Under communism, your toothbrush will not become socialised property. Marx only envisaged the socialisation of such 'private property' as was in fact the means of social production.
>The capitalist "social"
>determination of use-values is defective in the many ways that Marx especially
>demonstrated.
>So, wholesale endorsement of the use-values or wants created by
>capitalism is not Marxism.
Charles' conflates an analytical tool, the concept 'use-value' with a moral imperative. Whether we endorse use values or not has no impact whatsoever upon their usefulness. Use-value, as Marx means it, is an objective fact, that is demonstrated in use.
Marx of course, being a dialectical thinker, could not accept that the
existing quality of consumption would be the final word on the matter.
But as we have seen, Marx did indeed celebrate the tendency for
capitalism to create new wants in people.
>
>Charles: In capitalism, consumer decisions come from "them" , the People, in
>form but , less and less in substance.
You might be disappointed by the choices that people make, but they do make them themselves, albeit not in circumstances of their own choosing. There's no point in decrying peoples choices, when we have failed to provide them with better ones.
In message <3.0.2.32.19990819233211.00747cd8 at pop.gn.apc.org>, Chris Burford <cburford at gn.apc.org> writes
>>> Have we forgotten that the City of London was stormed on June 18th?
>>> Why do we forget this?
>We can't always be there at the high moments, and I certainly wasn't on
>June 18 in the City of London.
Nor was I.
>I suggest in fact all serious marxist and reforming organisations, are more
>likely to be behind the vanguard thrust that bursts through unconsciously
>at unpredictable moments.
In this case, you are quite a bit behind. The Stop the City demonstrations were first organised in the early 1980s. I was at college with some of those who did it, who were also active in the campaign against site closure at the college. Those involved were veterans of the Greenham Common peace camps, for example. As a piece of surrealist theatre, the demos were generally welcomed as a bit of fun (the fact that the first Stop the City managed to paralyse city workers by strewing the streets with Tampons, causing them to recoil in horror, was particularly comical), but essentially a sideshow to the substantial struggles of the day - the Irish hunger strike, the print workers battle against Rupert Murdoch, the Miners strike.
It is largely because the official labour movement has become so reduced in influence and activity that the Stop the City demonstration (an [ir]regular occurrence for the last fifteen years) stood out as a noteworthy event. It's very theatricality indicated the symbolic nature of the opposition, and its lack of roots in any popular movement. -- Jim heartfield