[lbo-talk] Subprime crisis - overaccumulation?

Wojtek Sokolowski swsokolowski at yahoo.com
Tue Jan 15 09:40:38 PST 2008


--- Charles Brown <charlesb at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us> wrote:


> One of the leaders of the 1917 revolution, a
> sedulous follower of the
> teachings of Marx and Engels, wisely counseled that
> revolution does not
> occur automatically as a result of economic crises,
> but only with also a
> party of professional revolutionaries who raise the
> consciousness of the
> mass of wage-laborers to socialist level.
> Revolution results only by
> the conscious actions of people, sufficient
> subjective conditions, not
> by objective conditions including increasing
> immiseration alone.

[WS:] If this is true, then who needs the theory of crisis? All it takes is professional revolutionary cadres and mass mobilization.

I happen to agree with the view that you espouse above. The only thing that is required for a socialist revolution (or change) is the mobilization of human and organziational resources, which in turn depends on the historical conditions in which it occurs. A theory of crisis, contraditictions, etc. is not only spurious, but counterproductive. It leads to empty abstractions, speculations, and millenary attitudes.

As I see it, Marx pointed to "contradictions" of capitalism as a rhetorical device to deconstruct the political economy of capitalism, which portrayed capitalist markets as "natural" and "rational" institutions. Marx showed that this economic theory of capitalist markets can lead to conclusions that are contradictory with this image of the markets.

In that respect, Marx can be compared to an attorney who destroys the alibi of the defendant by exposing its internal contradictions. However, that expose is not enough to obtain a conviction, let alone apprehend the criminal and undo his crime or stop him from commiting similar crimes in the future. One needs the institutional apparatus of justice and law enforcement to do that. Mere expose or even indictment will not do.

In short, the talk about "contradictions" and looming "crisis" is nothing but millenary speculations ans fantasies, a secular version of doomsdasy religosity.

Wojtek

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