By Ben Campbell
The North Star

Dec 15, 2012 – While today’s left has frayed into many strands, there was a time when the left presented, or at least aspired to present, a coherent Weltanschauung. This was Marxism, founded on Karl Marx’s brilliant synthesis of materialism and the philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel, which led him and his collaborator Friedrich Engels to an unprecedented coalescence of existing human knowledge.

Today’s crisis of capitalism has, unsurprisingly, led to a renewed interest in Marxism. Yet any “return to Marx” will not be found in an exegesis of ancient texts but in grounding Marx’s materialist dialectic in the present. Just as Marx critiqued 19th-century advances by incorporating them into his thought, so too must the most promising developments of the last century be synthesized into a radical understanding for the present. Unfortunately, today’s left has for too long been relegated to social and cultural studies, ceding the “hard” discourse in economics and science to a new generation of vulgar scientistic “quants”. The resulting left has too often neglected a dialectical critique, in favor of a dichotomous relation to science.

It was not always so. In an attempt to recover some of the lost spirit of the scientific left, I will be interviewing subjects at the interface of science and the left. I begin today with Helena Sheehan, Professor Emerita at Dublin City University. Her research interests include science studies and the history of Marxism, and she is the author of Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: A Critical History (available on her website).

Ben Campbell: The advances of 19th-century science were inseparable from the rise of “materialist” philosophy. While Marx certainly belongs to this tradition, he was also strongly influenced by German idealism, specifically the dialectical system of G.W.F. Hegel. What did a “dialectical” materialism mean for Marx, and how did he see it as an advance over the materialism of his day?

Helena Sheehan: The materialist philosophy of the 19th century was tending in a positivist direction. It was inclined to stress induction and to get stuck in a play of particulars. Marxism pulled this in the direction of a more historicist and more holistic materialism. It was an approach that overcame myopia, one that looked to the whole and didn’t get lost in the parts.

BC: You’ve written, “It is no accident that Marxism made its entry onto the historical stage at the same historical moment as Darwinism.” What do you mean by this, and what do you see as the connection between these two monumental figures?

HS: The idea of evolution was an idea whose time had come. It was in the air. Historical conditions ripen and set the intellectual agenda. Great thinkers are those who are awake to the historical process, those who gather up what is struggling for expression. Marx and Darwin were both great thinkers in this sense, although others were also coming to the same conclusions. Marx and Engels were far bolder than Darwin, carrying forward the realization of a naturalistic and developmental process beyond the origin of biological species into the realm of socio-historical institutions and human thought.

BC: Engels also wrote extensively on science, particularly in his manuscript Dialectics of Nature, unfinished and unpublished during his lifetime. What is it about this document, and Engels more generally, that has been so controversial in the history of Marxism’s relation to science?

HS: There is a tension in Marxist philosophy between its roots in the history of philosophy and its commitment to empirical knowledge. For the best Marxist thinkers, certainly for Marx and Engels themselves, it has been a creative interaction. However, some of those pulling toward German idealist philosophy, particularly that of Kant and Hegel, have brought into Marxism a hostility to the natural sciences, influenced by the Methodenstreit, an antagonistic conceptualization of the humanities versus the sciences, which has played out in various forms over the decades.

The critique of positivism has been bloated to an anti-science stance. The tendency of some to counterpose a humanistic Marx to a positivist Engels is not supported by historical evidence, as I have demonstrated at some length in my book.

BC: It seems to me that this synthesis of dialectical philosophy with materialism has always been contentious. On one hand, as you say, there is the danger of reducing an anti-positivist stance to an anti-scientific stance. On the other hand, there is the threat of “the dialectic” being reduced to a mere rhetorical flourish for an otherwise bare scientism. Other writers, like John Bellamy Foster, have argued that Marxism after Marx and Engels split along these lines. Do you agree with this assessment? After Marx and Engels, what or who best demonstrated the potential of a “dialectical” science to transcend this divide?

HS: No, I don’t agree with it. There have always been those who synthesized these two streams. Most familiar to me is the 1930s British Marxism of Bernal, Haldane, Caudwell, and others, and post-war Eastern European Marxism. Regarding the latter, it suffered from the orthodoxy of parties in power, but it wasn’t all catechetical dogmatism. In the United States, Richard Levins and Richard Lewontin. This would still characterize my own position today.

BC: Yet despite the ability of some to transcend it, there does seem to have historically been much ambiguity concerning what a “materialist dialectic” would really entail. Some, like philosopher David Bakhurst, have traced some of this ambiguity back to the philosophical writings of Lenin. Bakhurst argues that while Lenin appeared at times to advocate a “radical Hegelian realism”, at other times his philosophy failed to transcend a rather vulgar materialism. How did any such ambiguities in Lenin’s own writings contribute to subsequent debates in Soviet science?

HS: Yes, I would agree with that. Lenin could be very philosophically and politically sophisticated, but I never thought his philosophical position quite gelled. Some of his texts on reflection theory were epistemologically crude. As to the effect on Soviet debates, these were beset by the tendency to deal with writings of Marx, Engels, and Lenin as sacred texts. This rigidified further after the Bolshevization of all academic discipline, when there had to be one and only one legitimate Marxist position on every question. A quote from Lenin stopped any further debate.

BC: Such talk about the rigidity of Soviet science inevitably leads to the specter of T.D. Lysenko. For readers who may not be familiar, could you briefly describe Lysenko’s work? How would you respond to those who use Lysenko as a cautionary tale about the danger posed by Marxism or dialectical thinking to biology?

HS: T.D. Lysenko (1898–1976) was a Ukrainian agronomist who came to prominence in the U.S.S.R. in 1927 when his experiments in winter planting of peas were sensationalized by Pravda. He became lionized as a scientist close to his peasant roots who could serve the needs of Soviet agriculture in the spirit of the first Five-Year Plan. He then advanced the technique of vernalization to a theory of the phasic development of plants and then to a whole alternative approach to biology. This was in the context of wider debates in international science about genetics and evolution, about heredity and environment, about inheritance of acquired characteristics. It was also in the context of the Bolshevization of academic disciplines and the search for a proletarian biology and the purges of academic institutions.

The issues were many and complex. There has been a tendency to flatten them all out into Lysenkoism as a cautionary tale against philosophical or political “interference” in science. However, I believe that philosophy and politics are relevant to the theory and practice of science. Lysenkoism is a cautionary tale in the perils and pitfalls of certain approaches to that.

BC: If we turn from the Soviet philosophy of science to that of the non-Marxist West, you see a greater reluctance to mix philosophy with the content of science. Instead, a lot of canonical  “philosophy of science” (e.g., Popper, Kuhn, Lakatos, Feyerabend) has more to do with scientific method. What does Marxism, with its emphasis on contradiction, have to say about the scientific method? I wonder specifically about Lakatos’ background in Hegelian Marxism and whether there are affinities there.

HS: One big difference between these two traditions in philosophy of science is that Marxism pursued questions of worldview, exploring the philosophical implications of the empirical sciences, setting it apart from the narrow methodologism of the other tradition.

However, Marxism also addressed questions of scientific method. There is an elaborate literature dealing with epistemological questions from a Marxist point of view. There have been many debates, but the mainstream position would be critical realism. What is distinctive about Marxism in this sphere is how it cuts through the dualism of realism versus social constructivism. Marxism has made the strongest claims of any intellectual tradition before or since about the socio-historical character of science, yet always affirmed its cognitive achievements.

The fact that Lakatos had a background in Marxism made him inclined to take a wider view than his later colleagues, but I find that he left a lot to be desired in that respect. Nevertheless, contra Feyerabend, I think that the project of specifying demarcation criteria, so central to the neo-positivist project, is a crucially important task.

BC: Karl Popper famously invoked a “falsifiability” criterion as a means of solving the demarcation problem, which refers to the question of how to distinguish science from non-science (or if that is even possible). Popper’s solution has influenced many scientists but has been strongly critiqued in philosophical circles. How does a Marxist approach inform this demarcation problem?

HS: There is a need for criteria to distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate claims to knowledge. The positivist and neo-positivist traditions contributed much to the formulation of such criteria. They did so, however, from a base that was too narrow, employing criteria that were too restricted, leaving out of the picture too much that was all too real, excluding historical, psychological, sociological, metaphysical dimensions as irrelevant. Marxism agrees with the emphasis on empirical evidence and logical coherence, but brings the broader context to bear. It synthesizes the best of other epistemological positions: logical empiricism, rationalism, social constructivism.

BC: Today, Marxism stands at its weakest historically, right as the global economic crash seems to have most vindicated it. Similarly, Marxism has almost no direct influence on 21st-century science, yet discoveries and perspectives seem increasingly “dialectical” (e.g., biological emphases on complex systems, emergence, and circular causality). What do you make of the situation at present? Would it be possible to develop a “dialectical” or even “Marxist” science without Marxism as a political force? Or will science always be fragmented and one-sided so long as there remains no significant political challenge to capital?

HS: Yes, Marxism is at a low ebb as far as overt influence is concerned, precisely at a time when its analysis is most relevant and even most vindicated.

I think that people can come to many of the same realizations and conclusions as Marxists without calling themselves Marxists. However, I don’t think there can be any fully meaningful analysis of science that does not analyze it in relation to the dominant mode of production. Such an analysis shows how the capitalist mode of production brings about intellectual fragmentation as well as economic exploitation and social disintegration.

I don’t think that left parties having any chance of taking power in the future will be Marxist parties in the old sense, although Marxism will likely be a force within them. I am thinking particularly of SYRIZA, with whom I’ve been intensively engaged lately. One of the leading thinkers in SYRIZA is Aristides Baltas, a Marxist and a philosopher of science.

Thank you, Helena.

by Keith Joseph

I think that capitalism is a perfectly adequate term to describe the international system and I think that Marx’s critique of political economy provides the conceptual apparatus that we need to apprehend the world system. Lenin’s theory doesn’t add anything useful and in fact adds a great deal of confusion. I have made this comment before. Lenin’s theory is usually dogmatically defended (I define “dogma” as assertion without evidence), but here is my critique in a nutshell.

The four main features of Lenin’s theory are:

1. The combination of industrial capital with bank capital, creating a new form of capital called “Finance Capital.”

2.The move from competition among many capitalist concerns to huge transnational monopolies.

3.The move from mere export of products to export of capital; i.e. capital moving all over the globe in search of maximum profits.

4. Competition and wars between rival capitalist powers.

Each is wrong. Let’s take these one at a time:

1. The combination of industrial capital with finance capital.

Lenin gets this idea from the Rudolph Hilferding who elaborated it at great length in his text: “Finance Capital.” The problem is that this is not a theoretical discovery. It is a empirical observation. And Marx’s theory was/is adequate to deal with it. In the second volume of Das Kapital Marx explains that circuit of industrial capital has three moments: money capital, productive capital, and merchant capital. Collectively these three moments make up the circuit of “industrial capital.” In other words, money capital, be it institutionally controlled by a bank or not, is already a part of the circuit of industrial capital. The relationship between productive capital and banks can certainly be one of struggle and banks can dominate productive capitals but so can merchant capitals. Wal-Mart’s domination of productive capitalists – in mainstream literature productive capitals are referred to as wal-marts “suppliers”—is legendary. In any event, the idea that “Finance capital” is a merger of bank and industrial capital is redundant. It freezes a momentary empirical observation into a universal theory and only adds confusion.

Here is a quote from Marx making the point:
“The real circuit of industrial capital in its continuity is therefore not only a unified process of circulation and production, but also a unity of all its three circuits” The three circuits are money, production, circulation. (that is on page185 of volume 2 penguin edition)

What we need is a class analysis of the corporation. “Wall Street” is the colloquial term for financial capital. Investors, i.e., finance capitals, own shares of the corporation and some of those share holders elect a board of directors. The board of directors main jobs are hiring top managers and appropriating and distributing the surplus value pump out of labor. Top management takes on many of the same duties as the capitalist entrepreneur of smaller enterprises, namely overseeing the production process and seeing the commodity to market for the realization of value. All three of these moments, financing, production, selling could be accomplished by one capitalist, usually in a smaller enterprise, or they could be separated: a shoe making enterprise finance itself and markets its products in branded retail shops (For example, I just bought a pair of red wing work boots at a store that only sells red wing work boots. I didnt look that deeply into the companies operations but I assume the retail store is owned by the productive capital). Or the enterprise borrows money from the bank, produces shoes and delivers them to Footlocker (a separate retail store with wares from many different productive capitals) for realization of the value. In any case it is an empirical difference that we grasp with the same theoretical apparatus. In this case the theoretical apparatus developed by Marx. Hilferding and Lenin add nothing here but confusion.

2. the theory of monopoly capitalism
This is Lenin’s most egregious error and, in my view, his most pernicious. Have you ever wondered why so few Marxists read Marx? The theory of monopoly capitalism is the answer.

Everyone familiar Lenin ‘s theory, and the history of the communist movement, knows the following catechism:
Marx studied 19th century competitive capitalism. But in the 20th century a new and higher monopoly stage of capitalism emerged, analyzed by Lenin.

This, of course, renders Marx’s magnum opus Das Kapital and his labor theory of value to the dustbin of academia, and thus Lenin’s short propaganda pamphlet displaces Marx’s critique of political economy (competition between capitals is the mechanism that enforces what Marx called “the law of value” without competition there is no labor theory of value). Why bother reading Marx. The capitalism Marx talks about no longer exists. Or so 20th century communists believed. But they were: WRONG!

But just because it displaces Marx does not make it wrong. Let’s see how Lenin’s theory is wrong.

The theory of monopoly capitalism posits two stages of capitalism: a nineteenth century competitive stage, and a twentieth century monopoly stage. This dichotomy, the very notion of a “competitive stage,” and a “monopoly stage” is incontrovertible evidence that Lenin is working with a different theoretical paradigm then Marx. In other words, Lenin and Marx have very different theories of competition and monopoly. In Lenin monopoly negates competition (if this weren’t the case there would be no need to identify a “new stage”), and thus the law of value is negated. In Marx monopoly intensifies competition.

The idea that there are stages of capitalism with different laws is a radical error. Lenin’s theory is linear. Marx’s is dialectical. In Marx competition leads to monopoly and monopoly leads to competition. The laws of capitalism do not change. There are not new “stages” of capitalism. The application of capitalism’s “laws of motion” first analyzed by Marx are intensified and more perfectly applied over more and more geographic space as capitalism develops. They are not negated as in Lenin’s theory.
Indeed, the world of globalization is not one of monopoly. Quite the opposite, it is one of HYPER-COMPETITION. This is obvious, no?

Global capitalism is the law of value enforced ruthlessly across the face of the entire planet. Everyday more people enter into capitalist social relations. Globalization is capitalism perfecting itself and creating the conditions for its transcendence.

Jonas Zonninsein has a somewhat obscure text entitled “Monopoly Capital Theory” which offers a rigorous critique of Lenin and Hilferding’s theory. I highly recommend it.

3. Export of Capital
The United States, as in “U.S. led imperialism.” is a net importer of capital, not an exporter. Capital is imported and exported regardless of the countries status in the system. Lenin is empirically wrong. Again a momentarily correct empirical observation is transformed into an incorrect theory.

4. Competition between rival capitalist powers
On this point Lenin’s theory has more in common with bourgeois international relations theory than with Marx. And this is the reason why communist analysis is pre-occupied with the nation state and power relations and when it comes to the international arena and has precious little to say about class. We should leave the analysis of power relations to Kissinger.

What we need is a global class analysis.
To just hint at such an analysis: the uprisings in the middle east are uprisings against LANDLORD States. The Gaddaffi regime, for instance, did not tax the Libyan people. The state collected rents on its oil field. The state was a landlord. Indeed, the OPEC countries are all landlord states. Landed Property is a one of the main classes of the capitalist epoch even though it is a feudal class (Marx has a lot to say about landed property in the Eighteenth Brumaire and in the third volume of Capital). The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are wars of industrial capital against landed property.

There is a collection entitled “The Rentier State in Africa” that develops the idea of the state as owner of landed property collecting rent. Cyrus Bina’s text: “Economics of the Oil Crisis” uses Marx’s theory of rent as do some essays in Peter Norre’s edited volume “Oil and Class Struggle” Also Fernando Coronil’s book “The Magical State” – a study of Venezuela– has a very good analysis of the landlord state in the introduction and first chapter.

Once we grasp that Lenins’ 4 central theses are wrong we realize that the whole theory of imperialism is wrong. We dont need a theory of imperialism. The uselessness of the theory is painstakingly obvious whenever anyone tries to use it to analyze contemporary events (the statement above is a good example). Especially the events it is supposed to explain: wars, global inequality, poverty. We need a theory of capitalism. Because capitalism is war, poverty, inequality, among other things. Do you know the best theory of capitalism? Marx’s value theory elaborated in the three volumes of “Das Kapital” and his “Theories of Surplus Value.”

We need a global class analysis. Our global class analysis must include: financial capital, productive capital, merchant capital, landed property, the working class (stratified across nationally boundaries, by race, by gender, by differential wages and skills, by rates of exploitation etc.)

These are obviously immensely complicated questions. Unfortunately, Lenin’s theory is not a help, it is in the way.

It is time to put away the meager gruel of Lenin’s “Imperialism” pamphlet and get to the feast that is the inheritance of the working class: Marx’s “Das Kapital.” We have good tools, we just have to learn to use them.

Conquering a New Popular Hegemony: Harnecker on 21st Century Socialism

“In recent years, and in increasingly more countries, growing multitudes have rebelled against the existing order and without a defined leadership have taken over plazas, streets, highways, towns, parliament, but, despite having mobilized hundreds of thousands of people, neither the magnitude of its size nor its combativeness have enabled these multitudes to go beyond simple popular revolts. They have brought down presidents, but they have not been capable of conquering power in order to begin a process of deep social transformation.” — Marta Harnecker.

By Marta Harnecker
Translated by Federico Fuentes, via LINKS

This article seeks to reflect on the issues raised during the roundtable discussion, “State, revolution and the construction of hegemony”, that occurred at the VI International Forum on Philosophy, held between November 28 and December 2, 2011, in Maracaibo, Venezuela. Logically, here I once again repeat some ideas that I have expressed in other writings, but have ordered them differently, while further refining some of them. It was written in July 2012 and first published in English at Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal with permission. Now available HERE in a PDF file set up from printing as an 11 x 17 fold-over, doubled sided, collated booklet, in easy-to-read type. Click HERE for a straight-though 36-page PDF document.

* * *

Index

1. Our goal: a different socialism

1) A new socialism, far removed from the Soviet model

2) Returning to the original socialist ideas.

3) Participatory planning: a fundamental characteristic of socialism..

4) Socialism, direct democracy and delegated democracy.

a) Decentralization: essential for real participation.

b) Direct democracy and delegated democracy.

5) A new society that is not decreed from above.

2. Transition to socialism using the government as a lever

1) Neoliberalism bred 21st-century socialism in Latin America.

2) A dilemma: how to advance having only conquered governmental power

a) Using the inherited state to promote the creation of a new state built from below.

b) Transforming the armed forces.

c) A development model that respects nature.

d) Other challenges.

3) The need for a pedagogy of limitations.

3. Constructing a new hegemony.

1) Defining hegemony.

a) Bourgeoisie achieves popular approval for capitalist order

b) Bourgeois hegemony begins to break down.

2) The need for a political instrument and a new culture within the left

3) Political strategy for current situation: a broad front

a) Winning the hearts and minds of the immense majority

b) A new culture of the left

Our goal: a different socialism[1]

1) A new socialism, far removed from the soviet model

1. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the demise of the Soviet Union, Latin American and world leftist intellectuals fell into a state of confusion. We knew more about what we didn’t want in socialism than what we did want. We rejected the lack of democracy, totalitarianism, state capitalism, bureaucratic central planning, collectivism that sought to standardize without respect for differences, productivism that emphasized the expansion of productive forces without taking into account the need to preserve nature, dogmatism, intolerance towards legitimate opposition, the attempt to impose atheism by persecuting believers, the need for a single party to lead the process of transition.

2. So, why talk about socialism at all, if that word carried and continues to carry such a heavy burden of negative connotations?

3. To answer this question, we need to consider some important issues. On the one hand, just as Soviet socialism was collapsing, democratic and participatory processes in local governments began to emerge in Latin America, foreshadowing the “kind of alternative to capitalism that people wanted to build.”[2] On the other, by demonstrating in practice that people could govern in a transparent, non-corrupt, democratic and participatory manner, the political conditions in several Latin American countries were thus prepared to make possible the coming to power of the left through democratic elections.

4. These beacons that began to radiate throughout our continent were aided by the resounding failure of neoliberalism during the 1980s and 1990s and, more recently, by the global crisis of capitalism. An alternative to capitalism is more necessary than ever. But what should it be called?

5. It was President Chávez who had the audacity to point to socialism as the alternative to capitalism He called it “21st-century socialism,” reclaiming the values associated with the word socialism: “love, solidarity, equality between men and women and equity among all,”[3] while added the adjective “21st century” to differentiate this new socialism from the errors and deviations present in the model of socialism that was implemented during the 20th century in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries.

6. Aware of the negative connotation associated with this word, Chavez dedicated himself to explaining to his people, through numerous public speeches and interventions, all the benefits that this new society would bring with it, in contrast to the situation created by capitalism. His interventions have been so successful that, according to various polls, more than half of Venezuela’s population prefers socialism over capitalism.

7. However, it is worth remembering that 35 years earlier in Chile, the victory of President Salvador Allende in the early 1970s, with the support of the leftist Popular Unity coalition, marked the beginning of the world’s first experiment in a peaceful transition to socialism. Although it was defeated by a military coup three years later, the experience left us with some important lessons. If our generation learned anything from that defeat, it was that peaceful progress towards our goal required us to rethink the socialist project applied until then in the world, and that it was therefore necessary to develop a project that was more in tune with the reality of Chile and the peaceful path towards socialism. Allende’s folkloric expression, “socialism with red wine and empanadas,”[4] seemed to capture this idea, pointing towards the building of a democratic socialist society rooted in national popular traditions.[5] So I believe that the Chilean experience should be considered the first practical experience that attempted to move away from the Soviet model of socialism and towards what we now call 21st-century socialism. continue

By David Laibman

SCIENCE & SOCIETY 76

The Occupy Wall Street movement that began last fall at Zuccotti Park in New York City, and then spread across the country, has rekindled, with some urgency, the debate about left strategy, and about the direction the movement should take.

By the time this text appears in print, the discussion will have become fused with the political debate that always surfaces in the United States in a Presidential election year.

Let’s start with two affirmations: first, everyone who lives in the shadow of today’s world capitalist crisis has a right to give “advice” to Occupy. In my own conversations with activists (mainly in New York), I have found very little of the old “hey, we are the movement” attitude: everyone understands now that people with varying experiences and different degrees and styles of participation have a right to speak in the “general assemblies” of our time; that youth is not a guarantee of creativity and freshness of vision, any more than age is a guarantee of wisdom and experience. Second, yes, many of the things we will be saying, and hearing, have been said and heard before. That, too, is good, not bad. If some of us are reminded of debates on the left in earlier times — the 1960s, say, or even the 1930s — that does not mean that we are necessarily spinning (or reinventing) our wheels.

With this in tow, I want to consider the range of positions that are circulating within today’s activist movement. Without attempting anything like a systematic survey, I want to suggest that there are essentially three positions in play — three models of the society that oppresses us, and against which we are organizing. I will call this society “capitalist,” recognizing that that term means different things to different people, and that one of the three models (described below) may not even use it. Each of the models, in turn, has its own unique brand of proposals concerning how the movement should proceed: the relation between electoral and extra-electoral forms of struggle, for instance, or between long-range and short-range goals. Each of the models, of course, has numerous variations within it. Listening to the discussions, the first impression received is one of immense and random variety. The most common view, I believe, uses a two-model approach to organizing the cloud of ideas: these are the first two, of the three enumerated just below. My contribution is to add a third model to the toolbox. It should go without saying that more than one of these models can coexist within a single consciousness.

The three models may be labeled 1) Reformist; 2) External/Revolutionary; 3) Internal/Revolutionary.

The Reformist model sees contemporary capitalist society as having gone off the rails in crucial respects. Its description of the crisis, and the forces leading up to it, relies on metaphors and concepts such as “feeding frenzy,” “excessive polarization,” “loss of equilibrium between public and private,” and so on. We need impassioned and energetic forces, such as Occupy, to drive a new political momentum for balance, for reining in excesses, eliminating harmful externalities, generating the “shared prosperity” that is the “foundation for political democracy.” The movement should focus on reforms: fair taxation, government (public) responsibility for job creation in the last instance, full funding for health care, education, child and elder care, ecological sustainability. Issues concerning systems — of property, wealth, power — take back seat to the task of achieving measurable goals. The practical consequences of this model are fairly straightforward: pursue specific reforms, in concert with established forces (trade unions, reform movements, community organizations, the activist base of the Democratic Party). continue

Debating Strategy and Tactics: Chris Hedges vs. the ‘Black Bloc’  – 20 Minute video as discussion starter

Chris Hedges vs. Black Bloc

By Richard D Wolff
Online University of the Left via Truthout | Op-Ed

Sept 3, 2012 – Capitalism’s crises have always threatened it. True, capitalism’s defenders could fairly easily dismiss crises when they were shallow and short with limited suffering for the unemployed, bankrupt and their dependents and communities. Some said they were merely “bumps in the capitalist road” to growth and prosperity. Others saw crises as capitalism’s way to “clean out inefficient firms” and thus prepare its next upswing. Such interpretations of capitalism – ideologies – have long served to counter criticisms of its instability, recurring cycles and the suffering they impose.

However, such ideologies arouse many more than the usual skeptics when – as in the 1930s and again since 2007 – capitalism’s downturns cut deep and persist. Then capitalism’s stark inefficiencies become too glaring as millions of unemployed workers alongside idled productive capacity yield massive waste and long-lasting social costs. Bailouts of large financial capitalists by the governments they control turn skeptics into critics. The critics then become mobilized into a real political opposition when subsequent government “austerity” policies shift the costs of crisis and bailouts onto the mass of people.

Capitalists and the rich remain determined now NOT to bear the costs of the bailouts or the crisis. Unlike in the 1930s, they don’t see organized, determined and militant workers’ movements to worry about today – nor any USSR positioned as an alternative to modern capitalism. So, they push austerity policies for governments everywhere. To sustain governments’ austerity policies, capitalists and the rich lean on their ideological crutches to try to thwart political opposition.

The mainstream ideology that works best as capitalism’s crutch is blame the government. This interpretation of modern society insists that the ultimate root and cause of economic problems is the government, not capitalism nor capitalists. If you are unemployed, foreclosed, or underpaid, the problem is not the capitalist who refuses to employ you, evicts you, or pays you poorly. It is instead partly your own fault, but mostly that of the government: the politicians and the bureaucrats.

Blame-the-government ideology serves capitalists and the rich executives, managers, professionals and advisers who depend on them. They can boost their profits and wealth by cutting wages, jobs and benefits, using toxic technologies, relocating businesses overseas, jacking up prices, foreclosing, evicting, and so on. They can provoke global crises and take massive bailouts with public money. To cover all that, business and political leaders, media spokespersons and academics compose a chorus that endlessly repeats, “blame the government.” They seek to transform that idea into “common sense” so victims of capitalists’ actions will automatically not blame them, but instead get angry at politicians.

The blame-the-government ideological crutch aims to stop, deflect and demoralize political coalitions of those hurt and outraged by capitalist crises. Consciously or unconsciously, capitalism’s ideologues want to prevent any repeat of what happened in the 1930s. Then, a coalition of workers, farmers, intellectuals, and others forced President Roosevelt to do the opposite of austerity. He raised taxes on corporations and the rich to pay for creating Social Security, unemployment insurance and a massive federal jobs program. A similar coalition today could return taxes on corporations and the rich back to those much higher Roosevelt-era rates. That could fund a government jobs program now like Roosevelt’s, reducing unemployment now without any deficit and thus no additional national debt. It could, of course, go further and question capitalism itself.

Blame-the-government ideology aims to prevent workers’ angers and resentments about their deprivations under capitalism from building effective, organized political power. That ideological crutch seeks to assure that what capitalism does to the people economically will not be undone by the people politically.

Blame-the-government ideology supports capitalism also in another way. By portraying government as wasteful, incompetent, corrupt, power mad and oppressive, it strives to establish another “common sense” idea. Government should be kept economically weak: Keep its spending down, its budget balanced, or else in debt to capitalists and the rich (main government creditors). Limit the taxes it can levy, the regulations it can impose, and so on. Hobble the government while painting it as a negative social force, not to be trusted. Corrupt the politicians with the resources only corporations and the rich have and spend for such purposes and then denounce that corruption as the government’s fault. Turn workers away from engagement, respect for, or even interest in politics. Disgusted and alienated, many workers withdraw, leaving the political arena to the capitalists and the rich to buy and shape. US mainstream politics thus serves and never challenges capitalism.

Blame the government, like all ideologies, has contradictions and blind spots. When war is on the agenda, politicians get quick makeovers from “crooks” into “commander in chief” and “national leaders.” When workers strike and otherwise resist employers, capitalism’s ideologues want to unleash government on those workers. In such conditions, ideology waffles from blame and reduce to celebrate and strengthen government. Similarly, when politicians get caught working for and being paid by capitalists and the rich, a troubling question invades public discussion. Who really is to blame: the politicians who serve, the capitalists who pay and get served, or the system they built and maintain together?

Mainstream blame-the-government ideology is a fig leaf that hides (and thereby protects and supports) how capitalism works. In crisis times, it intensifies (e.g., Sarah Palin, Paul Ryan and Rush Limbaugh) to shift public attention away from capitalism’s breakdown and gross injustice. Its ideologues then urgently ratchet up blame on the government for taxing us, limiting guns, attacking marriage, religion and heterosexuality, mandating health insurance, imposing regulations etc. Their mission: redirect mass hurt, fear, anxiety and resentment about the effects of capitalist crisis into rituals of resisting the evil politicians and bureaucrats who want to control us.

Capitalism’s ideological crutches do not necessarily or always stress blame the government. In Germany (1930s) and Italy (1920s), for example, deep crises saw capitalists embrace instead fascist ideologies and political parties that exalted extremely powerful government. Hitler and Mussolini merged powerful government with major capitalist enterprises. They used state power directly to subordinate labor to capital and to destroy capitalism’s major critics: labor unions, socialist and communist parties.

Capitalists in the US, increasingly since 1945, have preferred a blame-the-government ideology that best reflects their thinking and advances their interests. They used it to help eradicate the socialist and communist parties that had been crucial to the powerful union (CIO)-based workers’ coalition of the 1930s. It helped likewise to weaken decisively the main labor movement (AFL-CIO) across the last half century. Workers persuaded that it is “common sense” to blame their economic conditions on government rather than their employers undermine union solidarity and militancy. Finally, blame-the-government ideology helped to roll back the New Deal as workers were invited to identify with corporations fighting against an evil government seeking to control them. Thus corporations could, for example, win public support for cuts in taxes on their profits even when those cuts threatened government programs workers wanted.

To expose and challenge capitalism’s blame-the-government ideological crutch does not mean reversing its one-sidedness. We need not and should not celebrate governments and their policies just because capitalism’s ideologues blame them. Governments are creatures of their societies. In capitalist societies, corporations and the rich use their resources and power to shape government to their advantages. They also lean on ideological crutches to win enough public support to keep control of the government and society. Workers have been and will continue to be victimized by capitalist controls of economy and politics. To change government policies they need to see through capitalism’s ideological crutches. More than that, they will have to organize politically as they did briefly in the 1930s. Yet that, too, was not enough. The New Deal struck by Roosevelt, the CIO and the socialists and communists in the 1930s was a change in government policy, but one that did not change the underlying capitalist economic system. It left the tiny minority of capitalists (major shareholders and boards of directors) in charge of the corporations and they used that position over the last half-century to negate and reverse what happened in the 1930s.

A different economic system would have prevented that outcome. A different economic system would shape and sustain altogether different government policies.

A different economic system from the ground up means reorganizing enterprises to put democratic majorities (of employees and of residents of communities that interact with the enterprise) in charge of all the basic decisions: what, how and where to produce and what to do with the profits. With the people in charge of enterprises – instead of tiny groups of capitalists – the economic resources they send to the government (e.g., taxes) will require it finally to serve the people in return. Just as capitalist enterprises always made sure to shape government to work primarily for them, so a social transition to workers’ self-directed cooperative enterprises would make sure that government, for the first time, genuinely works for the majority. Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission. Richard D Wolff

Richard D. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus, University of Massachusetts, Amherst where he taught economics from 1973 to 2008. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Graduate Program in International Affairs of the New School University, New York City. He also teaches classes regularly at the Brecht Forum in Manhattan. Earlier he taught economics at Yale University (1967-1969) and at the City College of the City University of New York (1969-1973). In 1994, he was a Visiting Professor of Economics at the University of Paris (France), I (Sorbonne).

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By Sidney Gluck
Political Affairs

August 18 2012 – The 21st century is witnessing an epochal change, something to be noted in the emergence of two economic poles-one dominated by Western capitalism and the other in the process of forming an association of former colonial countries in various levels and forms of economic development. Socio-economic changes have taken place in history similarly, but not with such an explosive and defining character. As an exception, capitalist colonial domination was part of its industrialization impinging on resources and cheap labor for greater personal gain.

There are now three forms of capital accumulation: privately owned industry, stocks, enterprises and financial capital; socially owned government accumulation utilized for industrial development, infrastructure, and forms of social obligations; and, social security wealth belonging to retired workers. Economic growth differs under the control of private and social forms of capital. The former is concerned with private individual accumulation. The latter is concerned with economic growth and improvement of the conditions of the working population, which creates the wealth in industrialized society.

The social security form of capital belongs to the people who have paid in during their productive years to support retirement and is a form of accumulation from their earnings placed in trust with the government for administration. For the past few years, this capital has been used and safely invested in the country and the proceeds added to the accumulation of the retirees.

The emergence of social capital reflects a major change in society, just as the emergence of private capital posited the change from feudalism to capitalism as an economic system and basis of social relations. The growth of social capital is inevitable as private capital ceases to expand domestic growth and job creation in developed Western countries, which comprise one third of the world’s population and where labor has succeeded through historic struggles to increase wages and living standards. Hence, industrial growth in developed countries has diminished or ceased. Investments have shifted to former colonial countries, including China, for the past thirty years, with incredible rates of accumulation reflected in the highest earnings of Wall Street despite the 2008 economic crisis, which ended for private capital in mid-2009 but persists in its fourth year with fifteen million still jobless and 17% poverty stricken.

At the turn of the century an organization was formed by Brazil, Russia, India and China, under the name BRIC and renamed BRICS after South Africa joined in 2005, with the intention of economic development without foreign private capital controls to counteract the negative effect of the Western capital invasion. This is indicative of the creation of a bipolar economic world. BRIC has now called a meeting in 2012 to organize trade and investment stimulating national economic growth with little emphasis on the military other than defense.

The epochal change we now witness diminishes the domination of private capital and opens the road to structuring harmonious societies that combine private and social capital to maintain and accelerate industrial development destined to create social security and sustain the working population, which, in any event, is the prime source of national wealth.

Wealth itself was generated by labor time in all forms of industrial production of commodities and salable structures, which ultimately exchange into the money form of accumulation in the marketplace leaving it to private finance to determine the direction of economic growth and avoid the consequences of economic crisis. A number of instances of government use of social capital in China are: loans to private corporations for the development of high-tech, the direct financing of necessary industries with low capital gains that assist major industrial and human needs such as energy, increased food production at affordable prices, increased minimum wages at a rate of 10% per annum until 2015 aimed at enhancing consumption to rebalance the loss of foreign markets to balance consumption at home to balance the loss of foreign exports, the enlargement of infrastructure and social services in the fields of education, health, etcetera and other social necessities.

One must acknowledge the fact that it is capitalism that developed industrial production, which is the basis for creating a society of plenty that could take care of all its population and eliminate exploitation. Long before capitalism under tribal communal society there was no exploitation of man by man. Elders ran a collective society, which lived off nature’s own production with little input of human labor other than gathering. That changed when some clever individuals learned how to use the forces of nature itself to increase nature’s own production. They ultimately enslaved others, creating class-dominated society. This continued for centuries, developing into control of extended agriculture terrain and animal husbandry which became the main means for human sustenance and growth-this, under feudal serfdom.

During the feudal era, private ownership in many forms developed in early stages where individuals produced desirable items as commodities and ultimately exchanged them for money. Individual production flourished and created a mass market. Some clever individuals set up facilities inviting producers into a “factory” where they sold their products to the owners devoting sales time to additional production for mass marketing. This relationship between owner and producers changed into another form of remuneration-that is, wages based on the total labor-time in the production process. This was the beginning of the capitalist wage-labor industrial system, which then went through a number of changes ultimately culminating in mass production and monopolization. Today the further development of high-tech, which reduces the direct labor time content, is taking place in undeveloped countries with cheap labor to the neglect of increasing production in the home countries where their capital base had originated. Thus, the wage-labor form of exploitation became the basis of industrialization and economic growth.

Adam Smith, in his “Wealth of Nations” did not deal with the exploitation developed with factory industrial production nor did he recognize the danger of economic crisis resulting from relative overproduction affecting market conditions. Troubled by the tendency towards crisis, he wrote a second book in which he expressed the feeling that “an invisible hand” corrects the economic crises in the system with no indication of relative overproduction and market disruption. The quantification of labor-time is basically the value of a commodity because the monetary payment to the laborer is only a part of the values created. The total labor-time is realized in the market in the form of money, and that is where the accumulation of wealth begins, since the money becomes a form of capital and can be re-injected into a growing economy and can increase financial private wealth accumulation in the market place. It was not until 1857 when Karl Marx published his first volume of Capital establishing classical economics which clearly indicated the source of wealth in labor time and the tendency of interruption of the process in periodic overproduction relieved by a shutdowns and economic crisis. Thirty years later, British economists supplanted this with neo-Classical Economics, which posited the market exchange as the source of wealth. The market is merely the area into which the inherent wealth in the commodity is exchanged for its value in money resulting in capital accumulation.

Capitalists compete but also monopolize, circumvent competition, control prices and wage-labor relationships. Monopolization leads to a higher level of capital investment magnifying exploitation. Ultimately, financial capital dominates the system and withdraws support for industrial capital in countries with high labor costs. The USA is an example for the last 30 years. Today there is not enough industry to absorb the available work force without expansion, which might have to take place with government assistance. Finance capital investment in low labor cost countries generally includes high tech which adds profit because it requires a small labor force further increasing profits.

The present economic crisis in the USA is an excellent example of the fact that the capitalist class itself has split into two functions-financial and industrial-with finance, the dominant factor, resulting in a cessation of industrial growth, neglect of existing industries and the continuation of an economic crisis for workers and the middle class. Investments overseas have created more profits in 2010 than in the history of Capitalism. True, industrial capital seeks a profit and wealth accumulation, but at least jobs are created contributing to national economic development and adding to the level of consumption.

Financial capital has dominated the capitalist system in the United States since the election of Regan in 1980, abandoning national industrial growth. In a historical sense, it has lost its right to run society. In fact, the Glass-Steagle Act, which regulated finance capital, was eliminated before the turn of the century. It is the real enemy to change, standing in the way of mass industrial development in total disregard of human conditions. Interestingly, financial capital itself in Western Europe is in trouble. The German capitalist class is an exception in its sense of history and its adaptation to change. When it took political power in the early 1870′s, it established the Welfare State to protect itself under capitalism; it has maintained a multi-party political system, representing various economic sectors. Furthermore, sensing world changes among former under-developed countries, they have established economic relationships with emerging countries, especially with China, welcoming Chinese capital investments in their own country and establishing mutual trade relations.

The German capitalist class recognizes the development of a bipolar world and is adjusting itself to participate in the changing international economic relations. Germany recognizes the growth potential of an organization named BRICS, which is planning an international meeting of former undeveloped countries in the spring of 2012 to foster economic unity, working with each other in trade and investment and no military involvements. This is a second pole in a bipolar world that is growing, notwithstanding denigration in the Western press, with the prospect of raising material investment and trade to stimulate living standards for where two-thirds of the world population resides.

Obviously, the world is changing in a positive direction. The only thing that would stop it is a war. There is only one country conducting military maneuvers and occupations on a global scale. Sorrowfully, it is the USA, which is not being supported by Western European nations as exemplified in the so-called NATO bombing in Libya which left the USA holding 75% of the bag for an operation in this guise. The New York Times wrote about that, and they agree. Just think about how federal money (which is social capital), now spent for destruction, could be used to revive industries and create jobs, which will then reduce the denigration of life in a humanist approach to improving living standards. Such a saving of capital by the federal government, as a result of reducing the Pentagon budget and the conduct of wars, can become accumulated social capital to be deployed in high-tech as well as protecting the country, its terrain, services, and people. Private capital can still be involved profitably, along with social capital and grow the economy to take care of the whole population.

In fact, Karl Marx observed, after noting class differences in France, “the Bourgeoisie will continue for a long time after the establishment of a socialist economy”, appreciating the creativity of private capital. The Chinese put it a different way: “the creation of a Harmonious Society” combining private capital with government social capital in economic growth for the sake of improving the condition of the entire population. Hence, one might say that the continued growth of industries will depend upon national economic planning rather than individual capitalist enterprises and politics. This is an economy buttressed with government and private finance guided by a national growth plan. Furthermore, government-financed loans to private enterprises, oftentimes in joint-ventures, solidifies growth and achieves the national plan; but this could not happen with the dominance of private capital since the plan would have to be based on national requirement rather than private interests with necessary compromises but socially and financially successful.

China is on that road, though it faces many contradictions in a society still plagued by feudal relations and the contradiction of wage-labor relationships with an overall vision of building the first high-tech industrial economy in the world under national planning. Do they have problems? More contradictions than any other country ever-because their population is fraught with multiple human natures reflecting productive relationships of different eras being molded into harmony, a process which is not an easy task. We are now observing higher levels of contradiction in the development of democracy in China which ultimately, based on the majority, would be the wage working sector as it develops a massive unity supporting a government that continues to develop the country without private capital domination. We should take our hats off to the successful Chinese leadership especially under Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, the former concentrating on guiding peaceful foreign relationships and the latter dealing with domestic questions, and both, leading the development of the next five-year plan which never has, nor will include the development of armed forces other than defensive necessities, because everybody knows where the threat comes from…and it is not the European countries.

By 2016 China has projected that their national production will equal that of the USA and then, surpass it. When one considers the fact that the Chinese are spending 90 billion USD per year for defensive military, one cannot help but realize how much social capital, that would be consumed in building offensive military forces, is being saved and used for socially productive purposes. This is a good example of why they were able to grow so rapidly and became the second largest economy in the world and destined to become the largest by mid-century, by tripling production to satisfy their population of 1.3 billion and growing. One must note this is the development of a harmonious society-by combining the use of private and social capital to achieve a centralized national plan.

Capital and Capitalism as categories are now historically different. “Capitalism” as a system developed capital as a form of money hoard used for continued exploitation and private accumulation. Accumulation of capital has divided in two forms with different social contents. The Chinese political system welcomes private capital investment in its multi-capital system but demands that private capital is invited to function together with social capital as part of, but not in control of, the national plan. Thus, social capital is now invested by the Chinese government as well as by Chinese individuals. That is a new production relation and historic contribution to humanity. In the last analysis, based on its ability to produce, this structure of capital investment will ultimately lead into a kind of high-level tribal existence, sans class aspects, with productive output reaching a level filling the needs of all. Let us call THAT Communism! “Socialism” is a historically necessary transitional stage to the ultimate state. To quote Karl Marx, the essence of socialism is reflected in his words: “from each according to ABILITY, to each according to CONTRIBUTION”.

This Marxist conception of economic and social development was based upon the bourgeoisie continuing and even growing, within a harmonious society and overall economic plans not in the hands of but requiring, private capitalists who must adjust to the laws of humanistic social development as the objective of industrialization. Beyond that, Marx described the ultimate productive and social relations as “from each according to ABILITY, to each according to NEED”-which might be called a humanity and planet protecting industrial system without class antagonisms.

In the turn of the 21st century we are witnessing a movement in that direction, essentially an economic development to achieve humanism and social justice-an idea first created by Jesus and followed throughout centuries of religious sentiment, which, in the latter part of the 18th century in England, saw the first expression of the idea of socialism when religious movements (not the religious institutions) demanded of the new government that they add “a bit of socialism” giving the vote to men (today we include women).

The lesson is-”capital” itself is not the enemy. Capital now exists in two forms-private and social. Private capital is welcomed since it carries with it knowledge of industrialization that is the heart of building a society under present forces of production. Therefore, the real lesson is building industries with full advantage of ability for NATIONAL development. Private accumulation is respected, provided it obeys the law and stays subordinate to a new form of democratic political structure yet in the making. Private capital accumulation must be guided and combined in a new socio-economic relationship; otherwise we will have nothing but continuing economic crisis and the kind of anti-social decline we are witnessing today.

In the vernacular -Bless Occupy Wall Street- as Jesus the humanist might have done, having given his life to eliminate man’s inhumanity to man. Historic change has created a positive direction for economic and social development, applying the humanism of religious sentiments with the addition of Marx’s economic vision so that politics will follow the social needs of humanity for true economic and political democracy and freedom.

Sidney J. Gluck can be reached at E-mail: sjgluck@aol.com