Dave B
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Adam I think you could be a bit kinder to Chris. I have been reading him for several years on informationclearinghouse as he has been writing highly critical and informative articles on the egregious state of US capitalism and foreign policy etc. More to the point perhaps he has left me with the impression he has been moving at quite a rate towards ‘revolutionary’ politics and in that sense he could be seen as a similar phenomena to our friend Russell. He used to have the intensely irritating habit of referring to Bolshevik Russia as ‘communist’ or ‘communism’. He has just written a book called Wages of Rebellion probably, a christian play on ‘Wages of Sin’ ? Eg; http://rabble.ca/whatsup/chris-hedges-speaks-about-wages-rebellion I have not read yet but in a clip I have seen of it he describes Lenin’s Russiaas state capitalism. So we could give the guy a bit of a break as it has taken the Trot intellectuals nearly 100 years to get to that position. He is clearly totally confused about Marxism in general. Thus he says as presumably his generalised misinterpretation of the Marxist Stage-ist that; …dismissed the belief, central to Karl Marx, that human history is a linear progression toward equality and greater morality….. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41955.htm If only I could pick that out and make it true! I don’t think post 1844 Karl would appreciate the insinuation that he was a moralist let alone the idea that economic progression of capitalism was the royal road to Morality and equality. Ironically perhaps that was the Christian Hegel’s position that Karl ‘turned on its head’ for something ‘a bit different’. Although as with these things there is a ‘mustard seed’ sized grain of truth in it which forms part of the Marxist ‘positivism’. The argument, rather than my assertion of ‘truth’, was that capitalism would tend to reduce all workers to an economic uniform homegenous mass with the ‘progesssive’ ‘global’ erosion of pay differentials. [Actually another interesting contributor to informationclearinghouse ex Reagan technocrat Craig Roberts observes and laments this as the erosion of the exceptional US middle-classes due to the outsourcing of US capitalist production etc.] And even in some cases the in-sourcing of skilled labour that demands a higher a price for their labour power commodity. UKIP style; a lot is made of the ‘flood’ of unskilled labour into the UK etc and the alarming migration numbers etc. Which is indeed ‘lamentable’ for the capitalist class because with a ‘minimum wage system’ there are small advantages in increasing the numbers of unskilled labour as the net effect is just to throw out the ‘bottom million’ into the ‘expensive’ safety net. Things in reality are remarkably different and little commented upon at the, outside London, 30K bracket. I know two Cubans, a Venezuelan and two non UK passport holding Pakistani’s, all working ‘over here’ on special skilled labour work permit visa things. The capitalist class like that kind of thing as workers who demand 30K and more to maintain their labour power are just taking the piss and need taking down a peg or two.
This ‘working class equalising’ affect depends a lot on your own economic perspective. Some of us arrogantly demand that third world workers should gradually raise themselves to ‘our’ level and thus not economically interfere with ‘our’ position, taken as read, and the holistic capitalistic game of selling your labour power as a commodity. And don’t like being ‘equalised’ or as they see it as being dragged down by economic realities. Admittedly these third world workers need to step up to the plate, as they will, and get unionised etc so maybe ‘reformism’ needs to start ‘not at home’. EG Clayton Aniline closed recently in Manchesterhaving been there since 1875 due to cheaper labour and cheaper Bhopaland ‘Green’ like safety standards elsewhere. So I think that maybe it is the international positivism of the equalisation of global labour power in capitalism with the hope of solidarity/empathy that comes with it that depends that much less on patronising charity. Returning to Hedges, he says; .. The fall of the Roman Empire, for example, led to misery throughout Europe during the Dark Ages, roughly from the sixth through the 13th centuries.. I appreciate as a lover of intellectual literature and the arts and that exceptional class that patronise that kind of thing etc. That the fall of the Roman Empire must be as a distressing historical experience, as the fall of the ‘Greek intellectual Empire’ to the Christian Hegelians of the 19thcentury. Although these Christian positivists tended to brush aside these advanced Greeks interests in buggering goats; (actually saw it in Naplesmuseum recently-not my thing really and was in a special room )and homosexuality etc http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2292709/The-art-exhibition-PG-warning-Erotic-Pompeii-goat-statue-amused-Romans-arrives-British-Museum.html You would think Chris would have as a Christian a more reflective view on the Roman Empirethat crucified his JC as part of his ‘Wages of Rebellion’. And as with the Maoist ‘shining path’ Peruvian peasant style anti positivist ‘Apocalypse of John’, written in AD 69, who as an early Christian had the fantasies of a divine anti Roman arsonists. There are academics reviewing Christian literature, eg Corintians II for example, who with computerised linguistic tools etc suspect that some of it maybe collations and compilations of separate documents rather than discrete works. To say that the ‘Apocalypse of John’ is a chaotic and disjointed work will no doubt draw some laughs. I think the Christian burning of Rome fantasies in it pre dated the event; as in Bin Laden/ World Trade Centre thing, who did what when and to whom and why is obviously much more impossible too to sort out than now. Or in other words ‘Nero’ had a point, The Dark Ages –another view. It would appear from recent material that these barbarians who overthrow Rome had there own set of moral values and were appalled by the antics that went in the coliseum; they seemed to have a more of a Klingon culture which is explored in 'Star Trek the next Generation’. And that the ‘Dark Ages’ economy ie before 600AD was more orientated towards clan based non state based and ‘non exploitive based labour’; there is a very interesting passage on this in one of the early chapters of volume one.? Bored now.Blanquism, Bolshevism, Rosa Russian Stage-ism and Menshevik ‘tittle-tattle’ prophecy ‘without foundation’. Rosa Luxemburg Blanquism and Social Democracy If today the Bolshevik comrades speak of the dictatorship of the proletariat, they have never given it the old Blanquist meaning; neither have they ever made the mistake of Narodnaya Volya, which dreamt of “taking power for itself” (zachvat vlasti)…………………………..Clearly no social democrat falls for the illusion of the proletariat being able to maintain itself in power. If it could, it would lead to the domination of its working class ideas and it would realise socialism. But it is not strong enough at this time..[ in Ruusia ], for the proletariat, in the strictest sense of the word, constitutes a minority in the Russian empire. The achievement of socialism by a minority is unconditionally excluded, since the very idea of socialism excludes the domination of a minority. So, on the day of the political victory of the proletariat over tsarism, the majority will claim the power which the former has conquered. Concretely, after the fall of tsarism, power will pass into the hands of the most revolutionary part of society, the proletariat, because the proletariat will take possession of all posts and keep watch over them until power is placed in the hands of those legally called upon to hold it – in the hands of the new government, which the Constituent [Assembly], as the legislative organ elected by the whole population, is alone able to determine. Now, it is a simple fact that it is not the proletariat that constitutes a majority in society, but the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry, and that, as a consequence, it will not be the social democrats who form a majority in the Constituent, but the democratic peasants and petty bourgeois.We may lament this fact, but we will not be able to change it. Broadly speaking, this is the situation as the Bolsheviks understand it, and all social democratic organisations and parties outside Russiaitself share this vision.Where Blanquism fits into it is difficult to imagine. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1906/06/blanquism.htmlI suspect from some of the stuff Hedges has come up with recently that he has been listening to Bolsheviks of various persuasions. Some of our Trots 'may' feel the need and opportunity of re-inventing themselves as permanent revolution Blanquists.
I thought were going to have a discussion on Blanqui? I thought the following was well ahead of the game for 1834 predating Karl and Proudhon somewhat anyway. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/blanqui/1834/soupe.htm
There is a load of Blanqui stuff that has recently appeared from nowhere on MIA https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/blanqui/index.htm
I suspect there are several aspects to reformism that may be overlooked analytically? One is 'reforms' that benefit the, or a national capitalist class, often in the long run, and as result have to be forced through against perhaps narrow ideological and short term-ist views of the capitalist class themselves by more level headed technocrats. And as far as the working class are concerned it should be seen as that. I suppose there are more ‘problems’ associated with that when the working class 'correctly' perceive that they can directly benefit from those ‘reforms’ ; aside from the 'motivations' and those other indirect ones of living under capitalism that is run 'efficiently'. Another ‘kind’ of reform or something that can be categorised as reforms, or not? Is were changes, other than direct wage increases, are made that directly benefit the working class at the expense of and from the surplus value and profits of the national capitalist class. Eg ‘campaigning’ for increased expenditure of health services above and beyond what the capitalist class think is necessary or cost effective or whatever. In my opinion the ‘funding’ healthcare is or can be seen as part of the necessary labour time required to reproduce and maintain the labour power of the working class. Therefore cuts and increases can I think be theoretically viewed in the same kind of way as decreases and increases in wages.
Left of centre politics tends to be a sort of mixture of the two? But what might be important with ‘national reformism’ is the general understanding that national reforms that fleece the national capitalist class have their limitations. As take it too far and the capitalist class will clear out. And then you have to face some ugly global capitalist realities that I think many of the ‘really pissed off with capitalism working class’ understand but leftish leaders dare not face. As with our friend Russel Brand, who fails to get off even base one with his acceptance from Ed Milliband that the NHS has been just extorted from the capitalist class who have no pecuniary interest in it. EG there are some sensible ‘technocratic’ bean counting capitalists in the USA who love the idea of a European style NHS system as the national US capitalist class as a whole end up paying more for healthcare for less. It also pans out to wage levels and health and safety etc. Eg whole factories and production moving abroad for not only direct reasons of lower wages but all the other expensive ‘paraphernalia’ of health and safety etc Russell talks in very parochial and nationalist egocentric terms about the coming of meanness and nastiness in national privileged UK capitalism, as if it is coming from within. As far as the capitalist class and capitalism in general is concerned it is a ‘levelling process’, which will turn the global working class into an economically uniform homogenous mass. Ultimately obviating, if capitalism persists, the extant problem of the ‘bottom billion’. I think PJS in this month’s standard talked about addressing first the material conditions of the ‘bottom billion’ in the transition to world socialism.Fortunately the evil truth seeking scientists are on the case. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v517/n7535/full/nature14098.html I believe is was set going by partially unrelated bluesky technical research at just looking at ways to grow soil bacteria in the lab, that had been notoriously difficult, to just look at them.The potential seems to be enormous.
EG The practice of "hiring out" was one feature of urban slavery that gave the enslaved a route to independence in their daily lives. Through this process, slave owners rented slaves to others. Enslaved people could, by arrangement with their owners, also hire themselves out. They then resided in or near the renter, who was officially, if not in practice, required to refrain from mistreating his leased property. Money earned from hiring out went into the owners' pockets, but oftentimes the laborer got to keep some himself. In this way, a slave might save enough not only to live on his own, but also to buy his freedom. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/living/history.html And another http://library.sc.edu/digital/slaveryscc/the-hiring-out-system.html
I was I think picking from the you-tube video. One view is that we have genetic hardwired pre- dispositions towards certain kinds of behaviour, nature and not nurture; egregious or otherwise, depending on your view. Another is that we our blank slates and behaviour patterns and attitudes are just acquired as ‘aggregates of social relations’, nurture and not nature. And in fact hardwired nature does not exist at all! Another is that behaviour etc is an interaction rather than a composite of the two and they remain in essence mutually exclusive The recent proposition is that hardwired nature can be trans-generationally ‘nurtured’. Although it is early days yet, and I am open minded on it; as this Lamarkian heresy is only just recently out of the bag, there is already some intriguing results on experiments on aggression in male mice etc etc. I suppose standing back a bit and looking down on the ever changing ‘aggregates of social relations’ of fast breeding mice in humanly controlled experiments one might say what does it matter? So the social relations of mice are made stressful and competitive, with ‘interesting’ trans generational results, and then made less so to see what happens etc. But? Incidentally I have not doubt my blank slater friends are utterly doubly appalled at even conceiving of such an idea. I think capitalist and ruling class conditioning is generally not very imaginative and lazy; working with the raw material it finds itself with. Including basic Kantian like moral precepts. Eg Belgian babies on bayonets, right to protect humanitarian intervention and WMD’s. Kant is quite simple really. Why is the following universally funny; for most of us anyway?ReligionThe Ferengi concepts of the afterlife are a mirror of their pursuit of wealth in life. When a Ferengi dies, he is said to meet the Blessed Exchequer, who reviews the financial statements of that Ferengi's entire life. If he earned a profit, he is ushered into Ferengi heaven: the Divine Treasury, where the Celestial Auctioneers allow him to bid on a new life. Ferengi who were not financially successful in life are damned to the Vault of Eternal Destitution.When a Ferengi prays or bows in reverence, he holds his hands in a bowl shape with his wrists together. A typical Ferengi prayer begins with this phrase: "Blessed Exchequer, whose greed is eternal, allow this bribe to open your ears and hear this plea from your most humble debtor." As is typical, this is accompanied by placing a slip of latinum into a small statue made in the Exchequer's likeness http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferengi I wasn’t trying to be sexists like the Ferengee with my ‘Man himself’ thing.
I always find it a bit surprising when this kind of thing is discussed how little attention is paid to the opinions of the man himself, Darwin, as he sort covers all the bases. And even as just as a historical scientific document. CHAPTER III.COMPARISON OF THE MENTAL POWERS OF MAN AND THE LOWER ANIMALS—continued. http://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/published/1871_Descent_F937/1871_Descent_F937.1.html I sometimes think that I am only person to have read it; apart from fellow scientists like Panneokoek and Kropotkin. And an almost very modern sounding passage in retrospect slotted in by Karl into this in volume one; that can, at a bit of a stretch perhaps, be interpreted in a kind of ‘epigenetic’/ Pangenesis way, same thing, as outlined in that you-tube video. (It is good for me to now see ‘epigenetics’ and crypto Lamarkism gone mainstream.) The Selection of dog nature into this is interesting and more than accidental I think; 50.Bentham is a purely English phenomenon. Not even excepting our philosopher, Christian Wolff, in no time and in no country has the most homespun commonplace ever strutted about in so self-satisfied a way. The principle of utility was no discovery of Bentham. He simply reproduced in his dull way what Helvétius and other Frenchmen had said with esprit in the 18th century. To know what is useful for a dog, one must study dog-nature. This nature itself is not to be deduced from the principle of utility. Applying this to man, he that would criticise all human acts, movements, relations, etc., by the principle of utility, must first deal with human nature in general, and then with human nature as modified in each historical epoch. Bentham makes short work of it. With the driest naiveté he takes the modern shopkeeper, especially the English shopkeeper, as the normal man… https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch24.htm It was fairly well understood then I think that dogs were one species having originated from wolves etc. And that they had been changed into a variety of forms by selective breeding for their various utilities. And Karl in a somewhat even pre genetic time seems to ‘suggest’ in this passage that there is a general dog nature and a general human nature. And you could look at dog breeding as ‘epigenetic’ selection for the suppression and expression of genes rather than selecting for cosmic ray induced mutations? It is also pretty close in subject material and approach to Darwin’s “The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication” that whilst Darwindidn’t publish till just after Volume One he seems to have been tossing it around after a few years before. Was Karl really up to speed? Eg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Variation_of_Animals_and_Plants_under_Domestication The epigenticists are laughing now the classic Lancashiresoooty black specked moth thing that I was taught a school as cosmic ray mutation is now looking like bollocks. And we also have the woolly deep freeze mice phenomena that Rentokil are trying to exterminate. There was also incidentally a really interesting and detailed academic discussion document on primitive communism dating back to around the 3rdor 4thcentury written by some kind of ‘Jewish’ historian that I have, to my intense annoyance, lost.
The "industry of death" exists in the world as many people in power live off war, Pope Francis told Italian schoolkids in the Vatican on Monday.“Many powerful people don't want peace because they live off war,"the Pontiff said as he met with pupils from Rome’s primary schools in the Nervi Audience Hall.Talking to children during the audience organized by the Peace Factory Foundation, he explained that every war has the arms industry behind it."This is serious. Some powerful people make their living with the production of arms and sell them to one country for them to use against another country,”the Pope was cited by AGI news agency as saying.The head of the Catholic Church labeled the arms trade “the industry of death, the greed that harms us all, the desire to have more money."“The economic system orbits around money and not men, women,”he told 7,000 kids present at the audience.Despite the fact that wars “lose lives, health, education,” they are being waged to defend money and make even more profit, the Pope said.“The devil enters through greed and this is why they don't want peace,"78-year-old Francis said."There can be no peace without justice,"the Pope said and asked the children to repeat those words out loud three times.http://rt.com/news/257545-pope-francis-war-arms/ Are we being eclipsed by Essex boy comedians and Argentinean Catholics?
Re Oswald on non productive production it is a bit of a big subject so I will have to defer for the moment and maybe return to it later. Unless someone else wants to start it off for me?I think slavery as part of capitalist process was an interesting subject that Karl pretty much conspicuously ignored given the fact that it was an important part of the global economy and that he delved into every other subject in depth. Thus I think it is a bit of open season playground for ‘Marxist’ analysis. In the USA slave owners 'would' rent out their slaves to industrial capitalists and there was also the ‘living out’ system were slaves would go out and actively seek paid wage labour and would remunerate their owners. I suppose they were either trustworthy Christians or had family held to ransom. It was part of the plot on Uncle Tom’s cabin I think. If successful and talented they could use their income to purchase their freedom as they did in the Roman Empire? There were similar things going on in Russian Serfdom in the early 1800’s were serf owners would loan out their serfs to industrialist, mostly in mining, timber and even textile production etc, during the periods of the year when they weren’t required for agriculture due to seasonal considerations. Apparently in Russiat here were fairly big textile capitalists in the 1800's who were ‘legally’ serfs or slaves basically. Anyway the 'workers' surplus value was being divided up between the pure industrial capitalists and the owners of the serfs/slaves? Which the industrial capitalist wouldn’t like as they would prefer to have it all for themselves. And then there was the related debt peonage which still operates to a certain extent in India until recently? We have echo’s of that problem with the von Mises type people. They, the 'industrial orientated capitalists' , don’t like the idea of workers indebted to the 'other lot' ie the financial capitalists.although the industrial caoitalists or 'profiteers of entreprise' as Karl called them are pretty much fused together as a class with the finace capitalists; Karl recognised potential tensions between the two. In fact most of the surplus value generated by western workers comes out of their ‘disposable’ income paycheck in the form of servicing debt eg housing/rent ,student loans and visa cards etc. The poor old industrial capitalists get a mere fraction in comparison? Apparently slavery in the US was a fairly low key thing in the 1700’s and most slaves were ‘employed’ on small farms of less than 50 slaves growing tobacco and another lucrative cash crop Indigo?Rice became an important slave produced crop in Carolina about that time but it nay have been merely a food staple for the slave economy itself on that side of the Atlantic?Apparently often on these farms the ‘peasant’ farmer owner, hired non slaves as well as owning slaves who could all be found working the fields alongside each other. Generalisations for then are a hazard of a presumption of uniform systems I think; which goes along with assumptions of the stereotyped versions of slavery as regards worse abuse that you could find in wage slavery in Britain in the 1850’s. As maybe with truck systems and indentured ‘apprentices’ etc eg Oliver Twist? The later Southern Plantation Cotton plantation model was adopted from the previous get rich quick big slave sugar plantations in Caribbean and Brazilwhich always was pretty nasty. You find that, albeit ignoring the nasty, even in the contemporary fiction of circa 1800 eg MansfieldParkby Austen and Robinson Crusoe. I think the general economic situation in 1700’s USis quite fascinating as they had all sorts of intriguing non gold and precious metal based money systems. Which is more relevant to the systems we have now.
For discussion? Karl in volume III described slavery being operated with a ‘capitalist outlook’. In volume one he briefly reviewed the southern states slave economy in capitalistic terms. Thus the southern slave owners themselves economically analysed their slaves as their ‘fixed capital’ as well as viewing them as like consumable capital and being used up in the production process; as with Karl’s spindles; in the non slave economy. The slave owning economists did actually discuss, in exquisite detail, the most profitable way, in capitalistic terms we would recognise, of exploiting their slaves; and whether for example it was cheaper, and more profitable, to work them to a general early death and just purchase new ones, or not, and where the optimum was. Seven years was considered the optimum for southern cotton pickers at one stage. There may have been ‘good’ economic reasons for the introduction of slavery in the first place; which sort of is also briefly discussed or suggested elsewhere in volume one. Although it is I think complicated by the fact that early on the price of stuff like at first sugar and tobacco from the America’s etc was highly distorted or very high with an associated high rate of profit. [The reasons for that can be analysed in Marxist terms; are perhaps less important than the consequences.] Going back to before the general introduction of imported African slavery; big capitalist entrepreneurs and investors were attracted by the massive amounts of money small colonist farmers were making, tried to get a piece of the action by, and for a very short time, shipping over and recruiting 'bone fide wage slaves'. These however would quickly go AWOL and set up on their own in ‘artisan peasant’ competition; because as far as this kind of production was concerned, the means of production was special land and location, and there was difficulty in maintaining monopoly ownership of it. Wage slaves are held captive due to being dispossessed of the means of production. There was I think a seminal 18thcentury essay by Lord Wakefield on this issue? The solution was quickly obvious; investing in captive labourers who couldn’t run away and set up on their own; and also economically drive these bastard simple commodity producing Proudhonists to the wall to wit. Looking next at the ‘Little House On The Prairie’ and Lincoln type people etc. Initially the big capitalists were not that interested in the less than spectacular profits that could be made in say other agricultural production in North America and even Australia. And were quite happy to let the emigrating artisan peasantry get on with it whilst creaming off any benefits in the form of merchant capitalism and the associated geo-economic benefits of politically dependent colonial planters etc. American Independence briefly changed that I suppose. The reasons for the American civil war are complicated, multiple and diverse. However one issue which might be overlooked specifically, when it comes to Abraham Lincoln’s background, was the increasing interest of the slave owning capitalists in the kind of agricultural production of the North which they had previously left alone for the richer pickings to be had South. As the Northern States moved Westwards, before the civil war, the slave owning capitalists wanted that land opened up for slave production. That was just as an appealing idea to the crypto ‘artisan contracting computer programmers’ as to learning of their work being outsourced to more captive wage slaves in India. Slaves being now use to pick apples and sow corn! There was also from the southern states the objection of a creeping Northern protectionist tariff system on general industrial products from Europe etc eg anything from spades to furniture. As that was not much the game of the southern capitalists being more consumers of such things rather producers; and they took the Adam Smith view on things. There has always been a general informed view that Lincolndidn’t give a shit about slaves of an African origin and there has been a recent book on that which makes that more than clear.
he has posted this recently in case people haven't already read it http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article41778.htm
