ZJW
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
I don’t know the degree of overlap with that discussion on youtube (which I was unable to steel myself to actually listen to in whole) but:
An article in the current Brooklyn Rail (section Field Notes) ‘The Economic Consequences of Neo-Keynesianism’ by one of those discussants, Jamie Merchant, is introduced by Mattick Jr so:
‘For an outstanding study of capitalism’s current predicament, readers can look forward to the publication in 2024 of Jamie Merchant’s synthesis of economic information and analysis, ‘Endgame: Economic Nationalism and Global Decline’, to be published by Reaktion in the Field Notes series. The article that follows, meanwhile, provides an invaluable account of the most recent state of political-economic play.’
The Jamie Merchant article is at:
https://brooklynrail.org/2023/07/field-notes/The-Economic-Consequences-of-Neo-KeynesianismAnd the article of which it is to a certain extent a critique, ‘Seven Theses on American Politics’ by Dylan Riley and Robert Brenner, is here: https://newleftreview.org/issues/ii138/articles/dylan-riley-robert-brenner-seven-theses-on-american-politics .
The Jamie Merchant has a big footnote about Brenner, beginning: ‘In this respect, Brenner’s more recent output represents a methodological regression compared to his earlier, path-breaking work on agrarian capitalism.’
And in the text of the article itself he says at one point of [Dylan/]Brenner:
”[…] With only vague allusions to the economic forces behind all this, political capitalism [referring to Brennerism] is basically indistinguishable from banal libertarian whining about “crony capitalism,” which is based on a similar claim that government corruption erodes the basis for the capitalist economy to function. Both views elide the system’s dependence on profits extracted from the exploitation of labor, which, pace Brenner, is still the basic foundation of the economic system.’
I’d forgotten there was that thread mentioning both the Heath and Morris books. (A good reason to use the search function before wantonly posting.)
One thing I would hope the Heath book has — has it, DJP? — is something of a list of anarchist communist groups around the world that took an internationalist position during the Second World War. ‘Chapter 16: Anarcho-Syndicalism during the Second World War’ of Vadim Damier’s ‘Anarcho-syndicalism in the 20th Century’ ( read it online at https://bit.ly/3nkFjmQ ) may have omissions in this regard, I’d think, since the book is about anarcho-syndicalism and not all anarchist-communists have been syndicalist.
Speaking of anarchist communists, will someone obtain and review in SS the new big book by Anarchist Communist Group member [?] Nick Heath, ‘The Idea : Anarchist Communism, Past, Present and Future’?
(Don’t bother with the booklet, also new, by Brian Morris, ‘Communist Anarchism a Defense’. That, I have, and thought reading it was mostly a big waste of time.)
The (really, media-led it seems) long-term obsession foisted upon anglophones about the Académie française is bizarre.
With the exception of (superficially) laissez-faire English, *all* languages that come to my mind have some sort of official regulatory body. Some of them concern themselves only with lexicon (or a limited aspect of which, say, Norwegian — both Bokmaal and Nynorsk — translations of recent technical terms coined in English), others also with pronunciation, not to mention syntax (grammar).
This applies to languages big and small, oppressor and oppressed. Irish Gaelic … Breton … .
(I say ‘superficially’ because the formal lack of such a body for English has of course in no way stood in the way of Geordie etc etc being stigmatised.)
I will repeat here what I pointed out in #200677 in 2020:
‘[T]here are two ‘Chris Wright’s. There is that dumb one, and there is also this very good one: https://libcom.org/library/stupid-regulators-greedy-financiers-or-business-usual-chris-wright ‘
The ‘dumb one’ means that reformist promoter of cooperatives whose name has come up on this forum from time to time. The article I linked in the post above to is by the good one.
(And I still recommend his critical summary/review of the book by Mattick Jnr. )
Replying to DJP’s #243461
DJP:
I’m a bit confused. The book, says AK Press, is a by a Zoe Baker. The thesis, on which I understood you to say it’s based, is by an Oscar Addis . The same person?
In any case, I read the Oscar Addis thesis some six to ten months ago and only retain what may be a caricature memory of it: that it contrasts anarcho-syndicalists pursuing reforms vs insane anti-reform insurrectionalist-immediatists.
Your reading was doubtless more useful/positive than what I recall of it. What did you get out of it?
I am replying to ALB’s #184610, the speculative last sentence of which is: ‘I think Marx would have been influenced by Moritz Hess (as he then was) who, the following year, published an article advocating communism as a moneyless society’
Ok, today in the forum Almamater wrote:
‘The SPGB said this about Kautsky in 2002 : Marx learned his socialist ideas from the communist workers he met when he lived in Paris in 1843 and 1844.’
It was very likely this in 2002 (but what issue/what article of SS?) that gave me the idea that — as I said in my https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/forum/topic/zionism-and-anti-semitism/page/5/#post-184594 — that ‘The fact of the matter is that Marx got his initial communism from Frenchmen […].
But what what is the textual or biographical etc evidence or proof for it?
Nothing to do with the present war. It’s the ‘intellectual property’ thing.
It’s blocked in Russia as well, and has been since 2018. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_Genesis . (Also click the link there for ‘shadow libraries.)
Thanks for telling me that, ALB. It had not occurred to me that it might be blocked in the UK.
Try this, which is the same thing but with .se rather than .ru as the domain:
https://sci-hub.se/10.1163/156920606777829140(A so-called ‘mirror site’.)
If for some reason even this is blocked, tell me, and I will simply email the pdf to you (an 18 PDF-page article), and anyone who wants it can get it from you.
I should have said:
1) I’m posting this not to advertise the perhaps not too interesting book but rather the great critical review of it. The review could well have been titled ‘Marxist Anti-Leninism: Stupid vs Intelligent’.
(Though, there are parts starting from ‘What about today?’ that are a bit heady for a person of my modest political-cognitive capacities.)
2) If you (DJP?) think you have read the review before, maybe you haven’t. It’s not entirely the same version as posted to libcom. This is the 2006 version printed in Historical Materialism. The one on libcom was the original from 2003.
Lizzie can read in full the article from which TM quotes, here:
According to right-populist T Carlson, Trump is being persecuted because he’s anti-war: https://twitter.com/i/status/1668747661028081664 . (13 minutes)
‘Criticise our wars and you are disqualified’.
The People’s Party that Movimiento mentions: https://www.peoplesparty.org .
Along with the Libertarian Party it is part of this left-right coalition against continued US support for the Ukraine side in the war:
Rage Against the War Machine: ( https://rageagainstwar.com/demands )
Thank you ALB, that is certainly very clear.
Now, no pertinence to your clarification of the SPGB’s practice and position as against that of others, purely regarding the history of the Mattick group being called a ‘party’, the Roth book (online here: https://shorturl.at/cqrCE ) has come to mind, and looking in it:
‘The colleagues from the Proletarian Party [ie a ‘left split’ from Keracher’s party that joined the Mattick people -ZJW] wanted an identifiable organisation: thus the United Workers Party (UWP) was formed. […] Mattick was agnostic about the name, taking his lead from Canne Meijer and the Dutch colleagues who already referred to themselves as a ‘Group of Council Communists’ in order to avoid the party-designation. This same collection of people were variously referred to as the Workers League, the left wing of the Proletarian Party, and the United Workers Party, depending on exactly when the commentator had been informed of the latest developments.’
[…]
‘By the end of 1935, the group no longer referred to itself as the United Workers Party, preferring instead the nomenclature adopted by the Dutch colleagues, Groups of Council Communists. The UWP had never been a political party as commonly understood and its name had caused many ‘needless misunderstandings’.75.’
Footnote 75 reads ‘‘Please Notice’, ICC, January 1936, p. 9’. And that ‘Please Notice’ can be seen in that issue of International Council Correspondence which is here on the Pannekoek Archive site: http://aaap.be/Pdf/International-Council-Correspondence/International-Council-Correspondence-2-02a.pdf .
