[lbo-talk] Kliman on Marx

Tahir Wood twood at uwc.ac.za
Wed Nov 28 01:25:02 PST 2007


Sorry Doug, I really thought that you were not going to answer my earlier question. Answers to some other points below.

On Nov 27, 2007, at 3:14 AM, Tahir Wood wrote:


> Yeah. Doug wants something from Marx that he would never ask of
> Derrida
> or Foucault.

Not sure what I'd ever ask of Derrida - I'm not much of a fan. I do like Foucault, and one of the things he offers is a theoretically informed and materialist interpretation of history. He had a lot in common with Marx, his protests to the contrary notwithstanding. Theory illuminating observation, and vice versa. Marx is full of empiricism. Capital includes lots of observations of factory life, quotes from capitalists, analysis of technology, etc. The 18th Brumaire is full of sociological detail.

Tahir: I meant your point that if none of this leads directly to revolution then what's it for. One could ask the same thing of Foucualt. And I have seen you enthuse about Derrida before but I'm not going to search any archives for that!


> Yes Doug, you are an empiricist, and I've told you that before (your
> fondness for all kinds of polls etc.).

I do try to figure out what people think and why. One of the things I've noticed about autonomists, anarchists, and the like is that they

claim to be more democratic than everyone else, but have almost no popular support at all, and don't seem to care much about that.

Tahir: I know, you make this point over and over and never seem to understand when people answer you over and over. I doubt whether anyone, democrat or communist, has ever said that the 'majority viewpoint' is some sort of definition of the 'correct viewpoint'. For the sake of progress in this debate maybe you would like to clarify whether you hold this view or not? Let me repeat for effect: I don't believe that the majority of people are necessarily correct. For example the majority who believed that the world is flat were wrong. OK? Got that? Now that we have established that I believe a minority can be right about something (your view on this still needs to be clarified), the question then follows: Can a small minority ever be right? What about a tiny minority? What, god forbid, if a situation should arise where only one person is right about something? (Yeah I know it would be very lonely, but that's a different point). I think all of the latter are possible. Do you? On to your other point: I personally don't claim to be more democratic than anyone else. In fact I have only a very lukewarm affinity, at best, for democracy. For example, I don't waste my time voting for politicians, who are almost universally peddlars of illusions. And I think the majority need to be changed, not endorsed. They can only be changed if they see another way of life emerging as an alternative. And that can ONLY emerge in the first instance from a minority (think about it). As for WHY people think the way they do; IMO they think like that simply because everyone else they know thinks that way. It's what people mean when they talk about ideology, hegemony, culture, etc. etc.


> Marx has been refuted by the
> empirical failure of the revolution or of capitalist collapse etc.
to
> happen 'on time', whatever time that may be - 1848? 1948?. But let
me
> ask a simple question here: is capitalism expoitative, and if it is


> how
> do YOU explain that? I presume that, not being a member of the
'value
> crowd', you would have no recourse to any notion of surplus value.

Of course I think capitalism is exploitative. I think SV originates in the exploitation of labor, and is divided into the familiar phenomenal forms of profit, interest, rent. This is the major reason I have no patience for populist/producerist distinctions between finance and industry, or interest (bad) and profit (good, as long as it's "reasonable").

Tahir: If there is such a thing as surplus value, and if, as you now suggest, it has some political importance, then it is quite legitimate for some people to want to understand it in some detail so as to emphasise its importance (I might not personally have their patience and powers of concentration, I concede). But your own preference for detailed examination of the lives and opinions of well-known politicians seems to be both trivial and arbitrary in comparison. Especially seeing as you now acknowledge SV to be central to the notion of exploitation and therefore at the very heart of the form of society that defines our historical epoch. I also don't quite agree with your last point above. Those populists are onto something, even if confusedly. Some of these FIRE 'services' are only utile to capitalism; I can't see how they could all survive the demise of capitalism, whereas production, by contrast, is part of species being. Production, and productivity, are not inherently linked to profit. And this is precisely the sort of question that I think doesn't interest you. But, as someone once intimated, every word in the critique of capitalism is a word about the nature of communism. If not it is just a waste of time. -------------- next part -------------- All Email originating from UWC is covered by disclaimer http://www.uwc.ac.za/portal/public/portal_services/disclaimer.htm



More information about the lbo-talk mailing list