[lbo-talk] U.S. Weakness and the Struggle for Hegemony by Immanuel Wallerstein

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

At 2:04 PM -0400 7/4/03, Doug Henwood wrote:
>John Mage wrote:
>
>>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 this is normal competition - part of the "beauty of capitalism," 
>as Paul O'Neill said of Enron. Winners, losers; fortunes, 
>liquidations; expansions, recessions. It's misleading to call these 
>crises, because the word implies some dramatic break. If they happen 
>every day, they're by definition routine.
>
>I think most Marxists who use the word are either consciously or 
>unconsciously echoing a "death agony" rhetoric 
><http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/works/1938-tp/> - this is 
>finally really the Big One that's going to reveal all the hidden 
>contradictions, and the System will come smashing down. Even if 
>users of the concept don't mean to, they're evoking that discursive 
>register.

As Anatol Lieven reminds us in his article "The Empire Strikes Back," 
Immanuel Wallerstein (as well as many a Marxist in the past) may have 
"often appeared as the boy who cried wolf.  But then, in the fable, 
the wolf, of course, eventually turned out to be all too real, just a 
bit late" (<http://www.canadiandimension.mb.ca/extra/d0627al.htm>). 
Therefore, I'd say it is as unwise to imply that the wolf would never 
come as to cry wolf too often.

The wolf made its belated appearance in Argentina in 2001, to take 
just one example, but Argentines were politically unprepared for it. 
Discounting the fragility of capitalist everyday life too much 
disarms you intellectually, and you'll miss a revolutionary chance 
when a crisis actually strikes your nation.
-- 
Yoshie

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