[lbo-talk] Subprime crisis - overaccumulation?

Marvin Gandall marvgandall at videotron.ca
Tue Jan 15 11:45:07 PST 2008


Charles wrote:


> ...Revolution results only by
> the conscious actions of people, sufficient
> subjective conditions, not
> by objective conditions including increasing
> immiseration alone.

Doug wrote:


>Lenin held
> Luxemburg's theory in low regard. He was much more convinced of the
> capacity of capitalism to develop - unless politics intervened.

Wojtek wrote:


> 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.
=============================== Who are these points aimed at?

Of course, you need a political party to take control of the state and break the political and economic power of the capitalist class. Who, with the exception of Chuck and his fellow anarchists, ever suggested otherwise? As for Lenin and Luxemburg, she believed in the revolutionary party, and he was equally opposed to "voluntarism". Their differences lay elsewhere - in their respective analyses of imperialism, the political role of oppressed nationalities, and party organization.

Both Charles and Woj, in arguing for the subjective factor, acknowledge that you need "objective conditions including increased immiseration" and "historical conditions" as well as the "moblilization of human and organizational resources". Perhaps we disagree on whether the former is necessary condition of the latter - that an immediate threat to economic and physical security is what produces mass mobilization and heightened political consciousness- but I doubt it.

I think we all accept that as tactically skilled and as resolute as were the Russian and Chinese parties revolutionaries, they would have accomplished nothing in the absence of mass immiseration and social crisis. Put Lenin, Trotsky, and Mao in Brooklyn and see how far their talent and energy would have taken them. About as far, I'd say, as Carrol in Bloomington and Chuck in Kansas City. Maybe things will change in future, but not without a profound and relatively abrupt deterioration in the "conditions of existence".

I responded to Patrick only to say Marx did not hew to any "crisis displacement" theory, as he had suggested, and that this developed only within Marxism when it became apparent his forecase of proletarian revolution induced by exactly such a deterioration in living standards in the most advanced capitalist economies was not coming to pass.



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