Externalities and reforms

Patrick Bond pbond at wn.apc.org
Mon Aug 27 12:42:05 PDT 2001



> Date: Mon, 27 Aug 2001 10:23:14 +0100
> From: James Heartfield <Jim at heartfield.demon.co.uk>
> I expressed surprise when Patrick Bond argued for a redistribution of
> resources within the limits set by capitalism, as a strategy for
> fighting poverty. I wasn't aware that he was so committed to the defence
> of capitalist property relations.

Ok clever, I agree, you weren't/aren't aware, and you're in another part of the world.


> I guess it is to do with being in another part of the world, but the
> proposition that reforms are not intended to reform was new to me.

Never read Gorz or Kagarlitsky? or Saul on SA in the NLR? Gazing at architecture has put you right off practical socialist politics, cde James?


> But
> since Patrick has introduced

No, borrowed.


> the oxymoron of non-reforming reforms, lets
> follow his definition...
> They should be
> >* politically *untenable*
> >because to meet them would change the
> >balance of class forces so decisively that we'd need a revolution in
> >power and social relations to bring them to fruition.
> Which seems a bit like a waste of effort to me. Why would you try to
> have a revolution to institute changes that are in any event affordable
> to capitalism?

Because unless you have a revolution, you don't get them, that's why. The reason: social power relations don't allow the decommodification of anything much, really, before K rebels.


> But then it dawned on me, that was exactly what did
> happen in South Africa.

No, on the contrary, as we're learning, keeping 5 million HIV+ folk alive is *affordable* to SA capitalism, assuming we ignore int'l pharmacorpo patent rights (the way some civilised health ministries do, such as those in Thailand, Brazil and India). But saving those lives is not allowed under present power relations. Would cost too much -- aside from the drugs themselves -- given the enormous size of the Reserve Army of Labour, you know. Keeping the RAL going beyond a certain convenient point (we're at +/-40% unemployment now) is a drain on the Treasury. (Just like early deaths from smoking save the Czech Republic money.) So "anti-retrovirals for all, on demand under conditions of a vastly improved public healthcare delivery system" is potentially a revolutionary (non-reformist) reform. More examples needed?


> What Patrick is arguing for is a transfer of political power, to an
> elite

Did I say that?


> with a different social base, but that does not disturb the basic
> conditions of capital accumulation.

Did I say that?

Actually, on second read, this sentence recalls for me the reputation of LM/sp!ked politics. Is this a creepy recruitment tactic, man? No way, I'm not falling for it.


> I guess the thing about different kinds of reforms that are being argued
> for is what is the political lesson that is being taught in the struggle
> to achieve them. Patrick's principle lesson appears to be to moderate
> such ambitions that threaten capitalism, and redirect energies in
> sectional attacks on other parts of the community.

Ah well, appearances can deceive even the London sharpy.


> I'm surprised that he has a quarrel with Robert Mugabe, who seems to
> have adopted just such a strategy in Zimbabwe.

Hey, how would you know about my tiff with Bob, then?



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