replies to Rakesh, Wojtek, Charles, Chris Anarchism / Marxism debates

[Rakesh Bhandari]

Jim,  I appreciate your insistence that we must tell the truth about
capitalism: the stagnation in real wages in the OECD, the having to run
harder on the treadmill to stay in place, intractable unemployment
throughout Europe, the lost decade + in Latin America and Africa, the
compression of real wages in Mexico, the barbaric descent of Russia, the
long stagnation in Japan (now only getting a little boost from big deficit
spending),  the permanence of horrifying poverty among at least the bottom
1/3 of the population in Asia, the looming depression in China the collapse
of the lone success story of miracle NICS (even renewed growth promises
little benefits for the working class in the future, this being the point
of 'restructruring'), the persistence of war and destruction (Iraq, the
Balkans).

To all this you say that life expectancy is improving, yet this is an
average (you seem to have forgotten the explosion in all kinds of inter and
intra national inequalities over the last 20 years). You refuse to
recognize the impacts structural adjustment programs have had on the infant
mortality of the poor throughout the world. In the case of the US the
reduction in poverty among the elderly which has doubtless improved life
expectancy has been accompanied by the growth of poverty among children.
And you seem unconcerned with the resurgence of communicable diseases:
cholera, malaria, yellow fever

 you could not
>argue that no progress took place under capitalism. (If you disagree
>with that you should say so.)

The point is that capitalism reverses the progress that it has indeed made
possible--it undermines the optimism of its Golden Ages and Bandung eras
(and let us remember the destruction of capital it required to allow that
bout of optimism).  If you think it can continue to ensure progress, though
not at the optimal rate and with a few 'temporary' setbacks, then you
should say that you have removed any rational warrant for revolutionary
Marxism.

Jim, just admit that you have thrown in the towel. Right ideologues are a
bunch of idiots. Your star would rise quickly at the Manhattan or American
Enterprise Inst. Why run a rinky dink magazine when you could have the
National Review or the American Spectator?


>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).

The creative aspects include the concentration of drug innovation on high
end users (see Ken Silverstein), useless r&d into copy cats and killer
seeds, semiconductor based guidance systems for weapons, the use of nc
tools to concentrate all skills among management, etc.

And I think this is silly:


>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.

Are scientists not to be blamed if they agree to work on atomic weapons,
biological warfare? Can't scientists be greedy if they all rush into
petroleum engineering instead of ecological biology? Can scientists be part
of the problem or are they some kind of holy men in your world view?

Yours, Rakesh