[lbo-talk] Switching Sides

[Carrol Cox]

Twentieth-c "conservatives" such as Buckley have no better understanding of
history than did Nineteenth-c Liberals. Marx notes in Theories of Surplus
Value that (I forget the name -- Stuart?), being an aristocrat, has a sense
of history (lacking in both classical and vulgar political economists).
Buckley, like many anti-capitalists who (falsely) conceive of themselves as
Marxists, believed in Progress, and assumed that if Progress ruled it would
eventually take the world to socialism -- hence the necessity of "stopping
it." Benjamin recognized the falsity of that view, developing rather
Luxemburg's view on the _real_ alternatives "history" ("Progress") posed.
She still was 2d International in that she believed the route to socialism
was the seizure of state power by a Socialist Party, and though she
explicitly excluded some vague conception of socialism as the "final goal"
that made sense of the present, still she did (apparently) assume that
seizure of power by a Socialist Party would (more or less automatically) put
socialism on the agenda. I would therefore gloss her "socialism or
barbarism" with the later slogan, "Capitalism or Democracy: Choose one"
(quoted in one of the Comments on Graeber on Lou's blog). Since, like Marx,
I will be dead by the time (if it ever comes) when democracy overthrows
capitalism, I don't need to hypothesize or predict that the "choice" made
then will be socialism or some other (now unknown) arrangement of human
activity.

What Buckley wanted to stop was an illusory train rushing towards socialism.
What Benjamin wanted to stop was a very real train heading deeper and deeper
into barbarism. (Note: I don't say "towards" barbarism: we have it already.)

Carrol

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Doug Henwood
Sent: Saturday, April 28, 2012 8:57 AM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Switching Sides

On Apr 28, 2012, at 8:44 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:


> I still believe that change is on the whole evil -- unless absolutely
> necessary. It is  necessary for human survival to destroy capitalism. And
> this is relevant to the debate over austerity. Austerity is the NORMAL
> condition of capitalism, violated for a short time after WW2. Normal
> processes of change ("Progress") after 1970 returned capitalism to its
> normal state. How did that quote from Benjamin go, re stopping the train
> we're on?

I keep getting it mixed up with William F Buckley's mission statement for
National Review: "It stands athwart history, yelling Stop."

Doug
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