On 2011-07-15, at 12:43 PM, Joshua Morey wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 15, 2011 at 10:41 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> ...As I see it, the intellectual poverty of the left wing discourse lies
>> in its unidimensional economic determinism and populism
>
>
> There are myriad leftists and Marxists who betray your caricature. It seems
> impossible to read EP Thompson, Raymond Williams, Bryan David Palmer, Aijaz
> Ahmad, Adolph Reed, Jr, (as well as people on this list - or even the list
> itself!) etc etc etc and conclude (whatever else you might think of
> them) that they subscribe to a "unidimensional economic determinism" system
> of thought.
Agreed. It's curious to see Wojtek indicting as vulgar economic determinists precisely those who say the Obama administration could have taken a different course well within the constraints imposed on it by American capitalism. I don't share the Trotskyist view, dating back in the 30's, that the crisis of the working class is essentially a "crisis of leadership", but it seems to me the 2008 election was one of those infrequent historical moments when leadership does assume a decisive importance - when the masses are aroused by a serious crisis, and the opportunity for significant structural reform presents itself. One can argue that it is Wojtek and others who say that Obama was too constrained by the system to do other than what he did who in this instance neglect the role of "agency", a charge Woj not infrequently likes to hurl at his critics.
^^^^^^^ CB: For Marx, economic determinism is only at the revolutionary level of change from one mode of production to the other, for now the change from capitalism to socialism; and the determinism is "ultimate". Reforms of capitalism, changes entirely within capitalism are not predominantly determined by "pure and simple" economic, "shop floor" struggles. Superstructural or political and ideological dynamics, including the working class participating in politics, "determine" things like the winning of the New Deal, the Great Society/War on Poverty reforms. There are some "vulgar" or socalled unidimensional class determinations still within the capitalist system, such as the whole of Reaganism ( i.e. reversing the New Deal and Great Society reforms) which is driven by the bourgeoisie.
Engels addresses the issue of the precise nature of economic determinism in Marx's theory in the famous letter to Bloch , below. Clearly, he distinguishes Marx's theory from unidimensional economic determinism. Marx's famous statement ::
Marx-Engels Correspondence 1890 Engels to J. Bloch In Königsberg Abstract
Source: Historical Materialism (Marx, Engels, Lenin), p. 294 - 296; Publisher: Progress Publishers, 1972; First Published: by Der sozialistische Akademiker, Berlin, October 1, 1895; Translated: from German; Online Version: marxists.org 1999; Transcription/Markup: Brian Baggins; London, September 21, 1890
[....]
According to the materialist conception of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase. The economic situation is the basis, but the various elements of the superstructure — political forms of the class struggle and its results, to wit: constitutions established by the victorious class after a successful battle, etc., juridical forms, and even the reflexes of all these actual struggles in the brains of the participants, political, juristic, philosophical theories, religious views and their further development into systems of dogmas — also exercise their influence upon the course of the historical struggles and in many cases preponderate in determining their form. There is an interaction of all these elements in which, amid all the endless host of accidents (that is, of things and events whose inner interconnection is so remote or so impossible of proof that we can regard it as non-existent, as negligible), the economic movement finally asserts itself as necessary. Otherwise the application of the theory to any period of history would be easier than the solution of a simple equation of the first degree.
We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions. Among these the economic ones are ultimately decisive. But the political ones, etc., and indeed even the traditions which haunt human minds also play a part, although not the decisive one. The Prussian state also arose and developed from historical, ultimately economic, causes. But it could scarcely be maintained without pedantry that among the many small states of North Germany, Brandenburg was specifically determined by economic necessity to become the great power embodying the economic, linguistic and, after the Reformation, also the religious difference between North and South, and not by other elements as well (above all by its entanglement with Poland, owing to the possession of Prussia, and hence with international political relations — which were indeed also decisive in the formation of the Austrian dynastic power). Without making oneself ridiculous it would be a difficult thing to explain in terms of economics the existence of every small state in Germany, past and present, or the origin of the High German consonant permutations, which widened the geographic partition wall formed by the mountains from the Sudetic range to the Taunus to form a regular fissure across all Germany.
In the second place, however, history is made in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each in turn has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersecting forces, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant — the historical event. This may again itself be viewed as the product of a power which works as a whole unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed. Thus history has proceeded hitherto in the manner of a natural process and is essentially subject to the same laws of motion. But from the fact that the wills of individuals — each of whom desires what he is impelled to by his physical constitution and external, in the last resort economic, circumstances (either his own personal circumstances or those of society in general) — do not attain what they want, but are merged into an aggregate mean, a common resultant, it must not be concluded that they are equal to zero. On the contrary, each contributes to the resultant and is to this extent included in it.
I would furthermore ask you to study this theory from its original sources and not at second-hand; it is really much easier. Marx hardly wrote anything in which it did not play a part. But especially The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte is a most excellent example of its application. There are also many allusions to it in Capital. Then may I also direct you to my writings: Herr Eugen Dühring's Revolution in Science and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, in which I have given the most detailed account of historical materialism which, as far as I know, exists. [The German Ideology was not published in Marx or Engels lifetime]
Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasise the main principle vis-à-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction. But when it came to presenting a section of history, that is, to making a practical application, it was a different matter and there no error was permissible. Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado from the moment they have assimilated its main principles, and even those not always correctly. And I cannot exempt many of the more recent "Marxists" from this reproach, for the most amazing rubbish has been produced in this quarter, too....
[....]
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm