--- boddi satva <lbo.boddi at gmail.com> wrote:
> So it seems to me that there is an enormous deficit
> in Marxist
> ideology and that is an almost total lack of Marxist
> finance. It's
> almost incredible that an ideology could be so
> influential while, it
> seems, basically wishing away the entire social
> phenomenon of money
> and proposing no real orderly way to create a
> substitute for it.
> Marxism must be a very good idea indeed to survive
> such a big hole in
> the boat.
I do not think it is a fair conclusion at all - seems more like a talking point cooked up by some neo-liberal think tank ;).
The short reply to this is that "proper" Marxism was not meant to be implemented in a backward rural society like Russia, but in an advanced industrial society like Germany or England with highly developed capitalist institutions, including the banking system.
Socialism was not about re-inventing these institutions from scratch, but about "subsuming" them under different social relations (mainly public as opposed to private ownership).
>From that standpoint, Marx did not have to reinvent
the wheel in the form of a 'socialist' banking system,
just as he did not have to reinvent the wheel in the
form of devising 'socialists' technologies. This was
the historical role of capitalism, and it was
performing that role just fine. The next stage was to
be socialism in which these fine creations of
capitalism were to be subjected to socialist social
relations which were mainly about re-distribution of
goods created by capitalism rather than about creating
utopian alternatives to capitalism.
This is probably one of the most poorly understood aspects of marxism, both by the bourgeois critics and populist lefties. The former had obvious stakes in caricaturing and distorting it, the latter however succumbed to anti-Western sentiments under the guise of criticizing capitalism and proposing indigineous institutions of Secon- or Third-world countries as alternatives to the "Western" institutions created and run by white men and Jews.
Another factor contributing to that misunderstanding of Marxism was that it was first adopted as an official ideology in a backward agrarian country desperately trying to industrialize. It is as if someone tried to bring computers to a country without electricity.
The problem with Russian modernization was that it did not have the institutional base that more advanced Western countries did. This was particularly true of the banking system which Russia simply did not have, and which was necessary to finance industrialization projects. Trotsky was well aware of that, but he saw it as an opportunity for the working class to create these institutions from the scratch (as opposed to waiting for the bourgeoise create them first). That ideal undoubtedly influenced much of the left thinking, especially on the West.
In reality, however, it was the state in Russia that assumed the role of the missing banking system, following the models of cartel organizations from France, Germany, and Japan. For more on that see Alexander Gerschenkron, _ Economic backwardness in a historical perspective_ who provides a very convincing argument about that aspect of Russian development.
This means that contrary to your argument the Soviets did develop a rather innovative financial system that suited their unique needs - that based on the state assuming the role of the investment bank in a cartel-like organizationn of industry. This was the cutting edge organizational innovation at that time - way before Keynes brought the state back into the anarchic market econommy in the West. Needless to add that the same organizational principle worked quite well in Germany and Japan - and turned USSR into the second superpower.
If problems developed later (the ineffciency of plannig system, informal economy, barter, etc) it was mainly a result of the screwed up social relations in Russia and Eastern Europe - which is the subject of another discussion. Suffice it to say that the planning process was derailed by widely spread corruption, endemic to many pre-modern societies, on all social strata that could not be effectively controlled.
To summarize: - marxist theory did not fail do develop an alternative thery of finance - it did not have to as its central claim was to subsume capitalist institutions (including financing) under socialism rather than re-inventing them anew; - the first state that did adopt marxism as its official ideology (at least nominally) did in fact create a very innovative approach to financing industrialization - cartel-like economy controlled by the state acting as an investment bank; that was the cutting edge organizational technology at that time.
Wojtek
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