Marx Bicentenary
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Quote:Marx@200: tripleC special issue on Marx's bicentenary – Marx @ 200: Debating Capitalism & Perspectives for the Future of Radical Theory17th May, 2018 Fuchs, Christian and Lara Monticelli, eds. 2018. Marx @ 200: Debating Capitalism & Perspectives for the Future of Radical Theory. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique 16 (2): 406-741. https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/issue/view/38https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v16i2.1040 May 5 was Marx's bicentenary. The journal tripleC celebrates this event with a special issue comprised of 30 articles on 350 pages that show the urgent need for Marxian critique today. The special issue features a debate between David Harvey & Michael Hardt/Toni Negri on the relevance of Marx today, contributions by Silvia Federici, Slavoj Žižek, Erik Olin Wright, and many more; the first English translation of a text by Rosa Luxemburg on Karl Marx, a review of Sven-Eric Liedman's new Marx-biography, etc. Topics include e.g. Marx in the context of universal alienation, formal and real subsumption, praxis, primitive accumulation, feminism, radical change, post-capitalism/alternatives to capitalism, communication, the working class, social reproduction, ecology, social movements, religion/liberation theology, the lumpenproletariat, the law and the state, anthropology, revolution, ideology, reification, sexuality, culture, nationalism, new racism, imperialism, neoliberalism, global capitalism, humanism, etc. With contributions by David Harvey, Michael Hardt/Toni Negri, Christian Fuchs, Silvia Federici, Slavoj Žižek, Erik Olin Wright, Lara Monticelli, Friederike Beier, Wayne Hope, Todd Wolfson & Peter Funke, Joss Hands, Peter McLaren & Petar Jandrić, Ingo Schmidt, Bahar Kayıhan, Joff P.N. Bradley & Alex Taek-Gwang Lee, Paul O'Connell, Chihab El Khachab, Franklin Dmitryev & Eugene Gogol, Bryant William Sculos, Leila Salim Leal, Paul Reynolds, Ben Whitham, Rosa Luxemburg.
https://www.triple-c.at/index.php/tripleC/issue/view/38 After a very quick perusal of this site. it looks like it contains some interesting material that could be of use. One comment I would make though – and maybe this is unfair of me because i havent read through all the material by any means – is that there seems to be a paucity, if not a complete absence, of any substantive commentary on what Marx had in mind by an alternative to capitalism. This is a point that really niggles me about these left wing academics – Marxologists or whatever they call themselves They will invest disportionately huge amounts of energy into exploring some relatively obscure subject such as the impact of hegelian dialectics on Marx's thought while more or less completely overlooking the Big Picture – the vision of a communist/socialist alternative to capitalism which, after all, is the whole point of the exercise is it not? Its as if some of these people are almost embarrassed to point out that we are talking about a moneyless wageless stateless commonwealth based on free access to goods and voluntary cooperation. Its as if they harbour some cringing fear of being labelled "utopian", and having their credibility questioned, by their "bourgeois" colleagures in the ivory tower of academe. The Comunist Manifesto spoke of communists disdaining to "conceal their views and aims"; among many left wing academics there seems to be a fad for doing precisely that, if indeed communism is their aim at all
It looks like there is a revival about reading Karl Marx works and his legacy, and an understanding that there is not a relationship between Lenin and Marx and whatever took place in the Soviet UnionMany Economists are saying that his analysis made on Das Kapital is more applicable to our times. It is a phrase used by Raya Dunayevskaya and the Marxist Humanist since 1960. If we have Capital riding in our backs Marx analysis would always be valid, eliminating Marx it would be like eliminating capitalism from our daily lifeHis opponents can look for all kind of excuses to discredit him, but the reality is that capitalism is what he described: A new form of human exploitation. Andrew Killman has also done a good job by reclaiming Marx's capital, and rejecting the ideas that there are inconsistency on his economic workshttps://www.amazon.com/Reclaiming-Marxs-Capital-Inconsistency-Dunayevskaya/dp/073911851Xhttp://ecopol.sociales.uba.ar/files/2013/09/Kliman_Reclaiming-Marxs-Capital.pdfThere is also a translation into the Castilian ( Spanish ) languageUntil now the best book written about the Alternative to capitalism is the one that was written by Adam Buickhttps://libcom.org/files/The%20Alternative%20To%20Capitalism%20-%20Adam%20Buick%20and%20John%20Crump.pdf
A good critique of the Economist's bio of Marx and may be relevant to some on another threadhttps://dissidentvoice.org/2018/06/the-economist-on-marxs-200-years/A helpful quote from the author to understand Marx
Quote:Marx recognized the possibilities of reforming capitalism, ultimately based on relative surplus value. He himself refers to them in the Preface to the 1st edition of Capital, pointing out that “present society is not a solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing”. Marx, however, showed at the same time the limits of these possibilities.The author's Leninist roots though become apparent in the essay
Quote:all realities of our time cry in chorus that the necessary progressive reforms, even those in principle theoretically possible within capitalism, can only be fulfilled in a revolutionary way. And their fulfillment is only conceivable as a step, a starting point in the process of transition to socialism.alanjjohnstone wrote:A helpful quote from the author to understand MarxQuote:Marx recognized the possibilities of reforming capitalism, ultimately based on relative surplus value. He himself refers to them in the Preface to the 1st edition of Capital, pointing out that “present society is not a solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing”. Marx, however, showed at the same time the limits of these possibilities.I don't agree that this is a helpful quote. It's a distortion of what Marx meant. In that Preface Marx is not talking about the possibility of reforming capitalism so as to make things better for workers. He is talking about the possibility of society being transformed into something radically different. In other words, revolution not reform: Here is the whole paragraph:
Quote:In the domain of Political Economy, free scientific inquiry meets not merely the same enemies as in all other domains. The peculiar nature of the materials it deals with, summons as foes into the field of battle the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast, the Furies of private interest. The English Established Church, e.g., will more readily pardon an attack on 38 of its 39 articles than on 1/39 of its income. Now-a-days atheism is culpa levis, as compared with criticism of existing property relations. Nevertheless, there is an unmistakable advance. I refer, e.g., to the Blue book published within the last few weeks: “Correspondence with Her Majesty’s Missions Abroad, regarding Industrial Questions and Trades’ Unions.” The representatives of the English Crown in foreign countries there declare in so many words that in Germany, in France, to be brief, in all the civilised states of the European Continent, radical change in the existing relations between capital and labour is as evident and inevitable as in England. At the same time, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, Mr. Wade, vice-president of the United States, declared in public meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations of capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the day. These are signs of the times, not to be hidden by purple mantles or black cassocks. They do not signify that tomorrow a miracle will happen. They show that, within the ruling classes themselves, a foreboding is dawning, that the present society is no solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing."Radical change in the existing relations between capital and labour" is what he had in mind, not reforms. Marx did think that pro-worker reforms could be introduced under capitalism, e.g. the Factory Acts, but that is not what he is talking about here.
alanjjohnstone wrote:A good critique of the Economist's bio of Marx and may be relevant to some on another threadhttps://dissidentvoice.org/2018/06/the-economist-on-marxs-200-years/A helpful quote from the author to understand MarxQuote:Marx recognized the possibilities of reforming capitalism, ultimately based on relative surplus value. He himself refers to them in the Preface to the 1st edition of Capital, pointing out that “present society is not a solid crystal, but an organism capable of change, and is constantly changing”. Marx, however, showed at the same time the limits of these possibilities.The author's Leninist roots though become apparent in the essay
Quote:all realities of our time cry in chorus that the necessary progressive reforms, even those in principle theoretically possible within capitalism, can only be fulfilled in a revolutionary way. And their fulfillment is only conceivable as a step, a starting point in the process of transition to socialism.I have never read anything from Marx indicating that the capitalist society can be reformed for the benefits of the workers. The author is distorting Marx, and that quote is incomplete
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