Well, that is basically what I meant. And I plead guilty to taking a cheap shot at Monthly Review without having seen it for years. Wrong of me and I apologize. It's just that my recollection from reading it years ago was that it was one of those left zines that constantly invoked the crisis word, as Michael P. noted.
And didn't they once get into a slugfest with that Shining Path bozo at Tufts who writes for Counterpunch? I've heard that MR was once very Maoist, but my recollection was that it was usually very critical of such stuff. They also had a more tolerant attitude towards religion than a lot of other socialists, as I recall. It was all a very long time ago....I decided to enroll as an adult student at Trinity College in my 30s after spending a whole summer in its library reading back issues of Dissent, MR, New Politics, New Left Review, and so on. So in a sense I sort of owe MR my life. The left saved me from the streets.....
Again, no offense meant.
--- John Mage <jmage at panix.com> wrote:
>
> Doug wrote:
>
> > Maybe this is just nitpicking, but when something
> is ubiquitous and
> > long-lived it seems wrong to call it a crisis.
> Crisis suggests a real
> > problem with a system's reproduction, and
> capitalism has managed to
> > reproduce itself - and expand - for centuries.
> Trotsky didn't mean it
> > that way, did he? Wasn't crisis another word for
> death agony?
>
> Isn't it pretty orthodox to say that capitalism
> requires its crises _in
> order to_ reproduce itself? Liquidating some
> capitals so that the
> remaining ones may again begin the expansionary part
> of the cycle, and
> so on. It's being argued that in this cycle there
> have not been _enough_
> bankruptcies; Brenner's argued that less efficient
> plant being kept in
> production underlies current economic problems. A
> crisis of insufficient
> crisis.
>
> But yes, the "turning point" sense of "crisis" (its
> medical usage for
> instance) makes the notion of managing a permanent
> crisis an oxymoron.
> Yet there is something about how capitalism shatters
> stability and
> security that makes that notion appropriate. For
> instance, at root the
> acute fear of job loss is essential to profitability
> and therefore to
> the system, certainly a crisis in the life of the
> person losing her job.
> What's unique about capitalism is just this linkage
> of dynamism with
> crisis.
>
> I know I was too irritable with Larkin. But the
> claim that MR has been
> predicting capitalism's demise from its internal
> contradictions is like
> 180 degrees from the Sweezy tradition. Grossmann
> yes, but Sweezy and MR
> have always critiqued Volume 3 & falling rate of
> profit or Luxemburgian
> versions. I'm personally more agnostic, but knowing
> something about this
> (certainly reasonable not to - lots of better ways
> to spend time) should
> be a precondition to making pronouncements about it.
>
> If what he really meant was that anyone who used MR
> over the last 54
> years to devise an investment strategy would have
> lost her shirt, of
> course he's right.
>
> john mage
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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