[lbo-talk] Meditations on Trotsky and Occupy_2

c b cb31450 at gmail.com
Fri Sep 28 12:04:48 PDT 2012


Chuck Grimes

It took me forever to finally start reading them. I was stalled out on Capital maybe fifteen years ago. It is certainly no pleasant read. It took David Harvey's video lectures to get over that hump. In a couple of weeks I was half way through Capital and got distracted and frankly bored. Yeah I got the basic ideas, and I was not interested in the archane economics theory. On the other hand, once I started reading just an outline of neoclassical economics, it was enough to realize there was no there there. It's pretense to objective social science was an outright fraud. This wasn't just an ordinary fraud. It was an ideology and went to the root of most of our social, political and economic history. As such, unfortunately, it needs to be studied anyway.

^^^^^ CB: Marxism-Leninism is not arcane economics theory. It is a truer theory for today than what is taught in economics classes today. Economics has gone backwards from _Capital_ with neo-classicism. Even Keynesianism is not an advance over Marxism.

For example, the penultimate chapter of vol. I of _Capital_ on the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation is righton theory for the Occupy Wall Street complaint. Monopolization and centralization; one capitalist kills many. That is the tendency fulfilled in .1 % vs 99.9 %, the anti-monopoly coalition. See also Lenin's _Imperialism_; imperialism's essence is monopoly. ^^^^^^^^

If anything it was Marx who was the social scientist, because at least he went to the factories, he studied the production systems, and he looked at the social consequences of the economic systems that oppressed society. He made no pretense to objectivity or place it beyond judgement. This system is brutal, destructive of everything alive, and it has to be changed in a radically different direction.

In any case that is a sketch to answer how the intellectual class can begin to effect and merge in a virtual sort of way with working class life.

^^^^ CB: Some of Marxist-Leninism intellectuals have "organicized" (see Gramsci) with the working class for most of our lives. Passing out papers at factory gates, joining unions, representing workers and unions in court or as stewards, having mostly autoworkers and other workers as friends, that is a working class social life in working class bars and sports. been "merging" with the working class life in a real,not virtual, way for decades. One benefit is the working class knows how to party .

^^^^^

It helps tremendously to join the working class for awhile to get your bearings as Barbara Ehrenreich and others have in various books. It is in the grand tradition of journalism, social reform movements, and directly corresponds to the history of field studies in other social sciences.

CG



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