“Socialism” is a negative for most Americans, but certainly not all Americans. “Capitalism” is regarded positively by a majority of the public, though it is a thin majority. There are certain segments of the public – notably, young people and Democrats – where both “isms” are rated about equally. And while most Americans have a negative reaction to the word “militia,” the term is viewed more positively by Republican men than most other groups.
These are among the findings of a national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press that tests reactions to words and phrases frequently used in current political discourse. Overall, 29% say they have a positive reaction to the word “socialism,” while 59% react negatively. The public’s impressions of “capitalism,” though far more positive, are somewhat mixed. Slightly more than half (52%) react positively to the word “capitalism,” compared with 37% who say they have a negative reaction.
A large majority of Republicans (77%) react negatively to “socialism,” while 62% have a positive reaction to “capitalism.” Democrats’ impressions are more divided: In fact, about as many Democrats react positively to “socialism” (44%) as to “capitalism” (47%).
Reaction to “capitalism” is lukewarm among many demographic groups. Fewer than half of young people, women, people with lower incomes and those with less education react positively to “capitalism.”
Read the whole report here...
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Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label capitalism. Show all posts
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Before and After Capital
Thomas Riggins
Anyone who reads Marx’s great work CAPITAL today, and the number of new readers is growing, will find, before they hit the first chapter, six prefaces (four to German editions and one each to the French and English editions) and two afterwards (to the French and to the second German editions). Some readers just skip over these preliminary writings and jump into the text, which is fine. This is a good way to get right into the heart of what Marx has to say. But after the first chapter or so it’s a good idea to go back and read what you have skipped over. There are some very interesting remarks and comments from both Marx and Engels to be found there that, if kept in mind, will really help in understanding what Marxism is all about. My purpose here is to highlight some of these remarks that I think are particularly important and to comment on them. I invite readers to comment on this article if they think I have left out anything that should have been highlighted or have misinterpreted a passage. I am not going to go over all the prefaces and afterwards, just the ones I think are the most important.
Marx: Preface to the First German Edition, 1867:
Here we learn that the first volume of Capital is a continuation of Marx's 1859 work A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITICISM OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, and that, in fact, the first three chapters of Capital constitute a summary of that earlier work. Marx also tells us that "every beginning is difficult" in science and that, therefore, the first chapter of Capital will be the most difficult. The chapters after it will be easy and straight forward. Since many people bog down in Chapter One and abandon the reading of Capital it is encouraging to note you just have to stick it out with this chapter and the rest of Capital will be easy going.
In this preface we also learn that the laws of capitalist development appear to be universal. Marx has studied its development in England because that country was the most advanced capitalist country. We are told that what is at issue, however, is not how capitalism may develop in this or that country but the laws of capitalism themselves.
The Chinese or Russians, for example, may think they are, or could be immune to the worst features and abuses of American capitalism, and maybe they could be today-- but the Marx of 1867 would not have agreed. He wrote, "it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the NATURAL LAWS of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these TENDENCIES working with IRON NECESSITY towards INEVITABLE RESULTS. [Throughout I have used CAPITALS to emphasize words I think important].
There may be some confusion between "iron laws" and "tendencies" so let me just say that in Marx's model of capitalism the "iron laws" are really what we would call the logical consequences that result from the premises Marx derives for his model based on an empirical investigation of English capitalism. The real world is vastly more complicated than the model which serves as a guide to its understanding. The" laws" of the model become "tendencies" when they are applied to the understanding of actually existing capitalist systems.
Once we understand the English model, Marx would have us believe that "The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future." How to make sense of this? Will third world countries all develop along the path that led to US and European capitalism? Well, Japan did. But Russia industrialized under socialist motivated five year plans and the Chinese and Vietnamese are controlling capitalist development by state supervision, and by a state that is not in the control of the bourgeoisie. So things have become more complicated since 1867.
Why were the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, just to mention two, accompanied with excessive violence (or so it seems to many)? Marx said that the American War of Independence (he does not here call it the American Revolution) was the "tocsin" for the bourgeois revolutions in Europe that followed it. He thought (too optimistically) that the American Civil War was the "tocsin' that would proclaim the coming proletarian revolutions in Europe. He thought "social disintegration" was very far advanced in England and would spread to the rest of Europe.
The rising of the working class, Marx said would be either HUMANE or BRUTAL "according to the degree of development of the working class itself." If Stalin or Mao appear to have been far too brutal we must remind ourselves that the development of the working class in their countries was at a very low level and that Marx had hoped that an advanced humane working class consciousness would have been possible to develop. It didn't work out that way in those countries.
Marx thought it would be to the "advantage" of the capitalist class to help the working class develop itself! Here is what he says: "Apart from higher motives, therefore, their own most important interests dictate to the classes that are for the nonce the ruling ones, the removal of all legally removable hindrances to the free development of the working class." So it is the capitalists who should be supporting EFCA along with the unions! Why is this so? Because a repressed and resentful working class with be a violent and brutal class when it seizes power from the capitalists and you will get Gulags! The capitalists are playing with dynamite when they try to repress the working people.
As for skipping stages of economic development and great leaps forward, Marx had something to say about this as well. It is Marx's aim to discover and explain "the law of motion" of capitalist society. Even when that is done and we understand where capitalism is leading and that socialism will eventually be the outcome we can "neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of [capitalism's] normal development." The best we can do is "shorten and lessen the birth-pangs." Not knowing the difference between these two approaches is responsible for all the failures of socialist states, just as correct application of these distinctions is responsible for their successes.
Marx also wants to stress the scientific qualities of his work. Too often his followers dwell on the moral short comings of the ruling class. Such and such an one is evil, or driven by greed, and they are attacked personally and held responsible for lay offs, factory closings or economic down turns ('greedy bankers", etc.). But Marx says, that his "standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBLE for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them."
Marx foresees his views will be violently attacked irrespective of their scientific correctness since they will go against "the Furies of private interest" which are "the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast."
As I said before, Marx was too optimistic with regard to the coming end of capitalism which he thought was right around the corner. It was even evident to him that the U.S. was going to be involved in radical change. He says "Mr. Wade, vice-president of the United States, declared in public meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations of capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the day." That would have been the success, perhaps, of radical reconstruction. President Andrew Johnson didn't really forcefully back reconstruction and it ultimately failed. Mr. Wade was not the vice-president, there was no vice-president in 1867 when Marx wrote his preface. Benjamin Franklin Wade was president pro tempore of the Senate and next in line to be president if Johnson had been removed from office as a result of his impeachment. Had he become president reconstruction might have taken a different turn. Well, so much for the preface to the first German edition. Lets jump ahead six years and discuss
Marx: Afterward to the Second German Edition, 1873:
In this afterward Marx explains why economics (political economy) can no longer be studied scientifically outside of the socialist movement, or only so studied under certain limitations.
The reason is that capitalism, as all other social formations, is the result of historical developments and has evolved certain characteristics that are historically conditioned and transient. The "laws" of physics may be eternal (e.g., the speed of light) but the "laws" of capitalist production are not. Thus if "the capitalist regime is looked upon as the absolutely final form of social production, instead of as a passing historic phase of its evolution, political economy can remain a science only so long as the class struggle is latent or manifests itself only in isolated and sporadic phenomena."
The class struggle is in full swing today and we cannot expect bourgeois social "scientists" to be anything other than apologists for the capitalist system. The editorial writers for the Wall Street Journal, for example, cannot dispassionately write about health reform, bank regulation, workers rights, etc., in any scientific way involving a non partisan "search for truth."
In England, Marx says, the last person to treat economic problems in an objective manner was David Ricardo (1772-1823) who wrote when "the class struggle was as yet undeveloped." He is still innocent of the historical nature of the antagonistic contradictions between the classes over wages and profits, profits and rent and sees them as an eternal "social law of nature." Capitalism and its contradictions would always be there just as the sun in the sky--- TINA as Ms. Thatcher would say ("There is no alternative.") How far will our bourgeois economists today go out of their way to deny these contradictions and sing the praises of an harmonious society. Regardless of the evidence we are told how business and labor have to work together to make the "system" better as it is the only "system" that really works.
Adam Smith and Ricardo lived in the infancy of the modern industrial world. The struggle between capital and labor then took a back seat to the struggle of the bourgeoisie and the feudal land owners. The first big cyclical crisis of capitalism was the crisis of 1825-- the direct ancestor of the present economic melt down, and the working class makes its debut as a force that actually could threaten bourgeoisdom in 1830 (cf. Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, the book not the Broadway musical!) The workers, however, won't realize their potential until 1848.
After 1830, in Western Europe at any rate, the bourgeoisie was firmly in the saddle and the class struggle was underway in ernest. Marx said this "sounded the knell of scientific bourgeois economy." Now truth took a back seat to those Furies of private interest mentioned above. Truth became a question of what "was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not."
This been the case ever since-- from Ivy League economic departments to Fox news by and large even , or more especially, today we have in "place of disinterested inquirers" only "hired prize-fighters; in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and evil intent of apologetic." And, we must admit, our Soviet and Chinese comrades were not above apologetics since once in power they were no longer "disinterested inquirers." It will be a big challenge for Marxist leaders, in and out of power, to establish truly disinterested centers of inquiry because only by a true understanding of reality can they hope to be successful and not repeat the tragic errors of the 1930s and 80s.
After 1848 there were a few bourgeois thinkers that recognized the legitimate claims of the workers and tried to "harmonize" them with the interests of capital. One of the best advocates of this harmonious society approach, Marx says, was John Stuart Mill: yet he only produced "a shallow syncretism." Marx then recommends a book about Mill ("Outlines of Political Economy according to Mill") by N. Tschernyschewsky ("the great Russian scholar and critic".) Don't bother trying to look this critic up under this name-- it is a terrible Cyrillic transliteration of the name of the Russian radical materialist proto-Marxist N.G. Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) the title of whose novel "What Is To Be Done" was used by Lenin for his work of the same name.
Now, a few remarks by Marx on his method and his relation to Hegel. Some writers, who should know better, have criticized Marx for the use of Hegelian "jargon" and the Hegelian dialectic in writing Capital. But Marx is quite clear, in the Afterward, this his dialectical method is the "direct opposite" of that of Hegel. Hegel thinks in the language of German Idealism and tries to construct his dialectic around the concept of the "Idea" as the basis of reality. Marx says that he himself studies external reality to see how we come to get the concepts and ideas (including that of the "Idea) in the first place. Completely unlike Hegel, Marx sees "the ideal" as nothing more than "the material world reflected by the human mind...."
With respect to Hegelian "jargon," Marx says he "coquetted" with Hegelian expressions a little in the chapter on value in order to avow himself as "the pupil of that mighty thinker" in response to the "peevish, arrogant, mediocre" critics of the philosopher who had raised their heads in Germany. Despite Hegel's mystifications, he was still the first to work out the form of a dialectical logic "in a comprehensive and conscious manner." With Hegel, Marx says, the dialectical method "is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell." I should also remark that while Marx says his method is the DIRECT OPPOSITE of Hegel's, he and Hegel both believed in the dialectical principle of THE UNITY OF OPPOSITES. This is why Hegel is still read today but from a materialist perspective, and idealists can learn much from Marx.
Finally, it should be noted that even now, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, Marx and his dialectical method are too hot to handle in most economic departments and business schools in the capitalist world. The dialectic is, Marx says, "a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors" because it does not recognize the reality of TINA (there is no alternative to capitalism). The dialectic "includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary." And, so now we move on to:
Engels: Preface to the English Edition, 1886:
One of the things Engels wants to do in this preface is to comment on Marx's use of certain traditional terms in political economy such as "rent," "profit." "commodity," "surplus," etc., which Marx has been accused of using in an idiosyncratic way. Engels agrees that Marx uses some of these terms slightly differently that they were used by his predesessors, but that he is clear about when he does so and the reasons for doing so. "It is," Engels says, "however, self-evident that a theory which views modern capitalist production as a mere passing stage in the economic history of mankind, must make use of terms different from those habitual to writers who look upon that form of production as imperishable and final."
I think Engels thought the revolution to replace capitalism was right around the corner. He says the boom and bust cycles of capitalism between 1825 to 1867 "seems" to be over and we are in "the slough of despond of a permanent chronic depression" and that a future "period of prosperity will not come." Well, he missed out on recognizing the tenacity of the capitalist system. We are now in another "slough of despond" but if it is permanent or not I will not venture to guess. We still have not really answered the great question that Engels says faces the capitalists in every depression: "what to do with the unemployed."
He thinks the unemployed might take matters into their own hands for he says "we can almost calculate when the unemployed losing patience will take their own fate into their own hands." I am afraid we can't calculate that either. But one thing is sure. Engels says Das Kapital is often referred to as "the Bible of the working class." If the workers of the world want to come out of the current crisis on top of the situation they had better start reading their Bible.
Engels in fact makes that very same recommendation in this 1886 preface. The workers might very well be able to come to power in a legal and peaceful way in advanced capitalist countries. In the 1880s England was the most developed country by far and Marx thought that in England the social revolution "might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means." That is what advanced democratic working people should aim for wherever democracy is advanced enough to allow for it. Marx did add that even if the workers achieved victory democratically he expected the ruling class not to submit and to wage a "pro-slavery rebellion" (a reference to the US Civil War).
The challenge facing us now is see how we can deal with the present world economic crisis on the basis of a modern understanding of Marx's great book.
Anyone who reads Marx’s great work CAPITAL today, and the number of new readers is growing, will find, before they hit the first chapter, six prefaces (four to German editions and one each to the French and English editions) and two afterwards (to the French and to the second German editions). Some readers just skip over these preliminary writings and jump into the text, which is fine. This is a good way to get right into the heart of what Marx has to say. But after the first chapter or so it’s a good idea to go back and read what you have skipped over. There are some very interesting remarks and comments from both Marx and Engels to be found there that, if kept in mind, will really help in understanding what Marxism is all about. My purpose here is to highlight some of these remarks that I think are particularly important and to comment on them. I invite readers to comment on this article if they think I have left out anything that should have been highlighted or have misinterpreted a passage. I am not going to go over all the prefaces and afterwards, just the ones I think are the most important.
Marx: Preface to the First German Edition, 1867:
Here we learn that the first volume of Capital is a continuation of Marx's 1859 work A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CRITICISM OF POLITICAL ECONOMY, and that, in fact, the first three chapters of Capital constitute a summary of that earlier work. Marx also tells us that "every beginning is difficult" in science and that, therefore, the first chapter of Capital will be the most difficult. The chapters after it will be easy and straight forward. Since many people bog down in Chapter One and abandon the reading of Capital it is encouraging to note you just have to stick it out with this chapter and the rest of Capital will be easy going.
In this preface we also learn that the laws of capitalist development appear to be universal. Marx has studied its development in England because that country was the most advanced capitalist country. We are told that what is at issue, however, is not how capitalism may develop in this or that country but the laws of capitalism themselves.
The Chinese or Russians, for example, may think they are, or could be immune to the worst features and abuses of American capitalism, and maybe they could be today-- but the Marx of 1867 would not have agreed. He wrote, "it is not a question of the higher or lower degree of development of the social antagonisms that result from the NATURAL LAWS of capitalist production. It is a question of these laws themselves, of these TENDENCIES working with IRON NECESSITY towards INEVITABLE RESULTS. [Throughout I have used CAPITALS to emphasize words I think important].
There may be some confusion between "iron laws" and "tendencies" so let me just say that in Marx's model of capitalism the "iron laws" are really what we would call the logical consequences that result from the premises Marx derives for his model based on an empirical investigation of English capitalism. The real world is vastly more complicated than the model which serves as a guide to its understanding. The" laws" of the model become "tendencies" when they are applied to the understanding of actually existing capitalist systems.
Once we understand the English model, Marx would have us believe that "The country that is more developed industrially only shows, to the less developed, the image of its own future." How to make sense of this? Will third world countries all develop along the path that led to US and European capitalism? Well, Japan did. But Russia industrialized under socialist motivated five year plans and the Chinese and Vietnamese are controlling capitalist development by state supervision, and by a state that is not in the control of the bourgeoisie. So things have become more complicated since 1867.
Why were the Russian and Chinese Revolutions, just to mention two, accompanied with excessive violence (or so it seems to many)? Marx said that the American War of Independence (he does not here call it the American Revolution) was the "tocsin" for the bourgeois revolutions in Europe that followed it. He thought (too optimistically) that the American Civil War was the "tocsin' that would proclaim the coming proletarian revolutions in Europe. He thought "social disintegration" was very far advanced in England and would spread to the rest of Europe.
The rising of the working class, Marx said would be either HUMANE or BRUTAL "according to the degree of development of the working class itself." If Stalin or Mao appear to have been far too brutal we must remind ourselves that the development of the working class in their countries was at a very low level and that Marx had hoped that an advanced humane working class consciousness would have been possible to develop. It didn't work out that way in those countries.
Marx thought it would be to the "advantage" of the capitalist class to help the working class develop itself! Here is what he says: "Apart from higher motives, therefore, their own most important interests dictate to the classes that are for the nonce the ruling ones, the removal of all legally removable hindrances to the free development of the working class." So it is the capitalists who should be supporting EFCA along with the unions! Why is this so? Because a repressed and resentful working class with be a violent and brutal class when it seizes power from the capitalists and you will get Gulags! The capitalists are playing with dynamite when they try to repress the working people.
As for skipping stages of economic development and great leaps forward, Marx had something to say about this as well. It is Marx's aim to discover and explain "the law of motion" of capitalist society. Even when that is done and we understand where capitalism is leading and that socialism will eventually be the outcome we can "neither clear by bold leaps, nor remove by legal enactments, the obstacles offered by the successive phases of [capitalism's] normal development." The best we can do is "shorten and lessen the birth-pangs." Not knowing the difference between these two approaches is responsible for all the failures of socialist states, just as correct application of these distinctions is responsible for their successes.
Marx also wants to stress the scientific qualities of his work. Too often his followers dwell on the moral short comings of the ruling class. Such and such an one is evil, or driven by greed, and they are attacked personally and held responsible for lay offs, factory closings or economic down turns ('greedy bankers", etc.). But Marx says, that his "standpoint, from which the evolution of the economic formation of society is viewed as a process of natural history, can less than any other make the INDIVIDUAL RESPONSIBLE for relations whose creature he socially remains, however much he may subjectively raise himself above them."
Marx foresees his views will be violently attacked irrespective of their scientific correctness since they will go against "the Furies of private interest" which are "the most violent, mean and malignant passions of the human breast."
As I said before, Marx was too optimistic with regard to the coming end of capitalism which he thought was right around the corner. It was even evident to him that the U.S. was going to be involved in radical change. He says "Mr. Wade, vice-president of the United States, declared in public meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change of the relations of capital and of property in land is next upon the order of the day." That would have been the success, perhaps, of radical reconstruction. President Andrew Johnson didn't really forcefully back reconstruction and it ultimately failed. Mr. Wade was not the vice-president, there was no vice-president in 1867 when Marx wrote his preface. Benjamin Franklin Wade was president pro tempore of the Senate and next in line to be president if Johnson had been removed from office as a result of his impeachment. Had he become president reconstruction might have taken a different turn. Well, so much for the preface to the first German edition. Lets jump ahead six years and discuss
Marx: Afterward to the Second German Edition, 1873:
In this afterward Marx explains why economics (political economy) can no longer be studied scientifically outside of the socialist movement, or only so studied under certain limitations.
The reason is that capitalism, as all other social formations, is the result of historical developments and has evolved certain characteristics that are historically conditioned and transient. The "laws" of physics may be eternal (e.g., the speed of light) but the "laws" of capitalist production are not. Thus if "the capitalist regime is looked upon as the absolutely final form of social production, instead of as a passing historic phase of its evolution, political economy can remain a science only so long as the class struggle is latent or manifests itself only in isolated and sporadic phenomena."
The class struggle is in full swing today and we cannot expect bourgeois social "scientists" to be anything other than apologists for the capitalist system. The editorial writers for the Wall Street Journal, for example, cannot dispassionately write about health reform, bank regulation, workers rights, etc., in any scientific way involving a non partisan "search for truth."
In England, Marx says, the last person to treat economic problems in an objective manner was David Ricardo (1772-1823) who wrote when "the class struggle was as yet undeveloped." He is still innocent of the historical nature of the antagonistic contradictions between the classes over wages and profits, profits and rent and sees them as an eternal "social law of nature." Capitalism and its contradictions would always be there just as the sun in the sky--- TINA as Ms. Thatcher would say ("There is no alternative.") How far will our bourgeois economists today go out of their way to deny these contradictions and sing the praises of an harmonious society. Regardless of the evidence we are told how business and labor have to work together to make the "system" better as it is the only "system" that really works.
Adam Smith and Ricardo lived in the infancy of the modern industrial world. The struggle between capital and labor then took a back seat to the struggle of the bourgeoisie and the feudal land owners. The first big cyclical crisis of capitalism was the crisis of 1825-- the direct ancestor of the present economic melt down, and the working class makes its debut as a force that actually could threaten bourgeoisdom in 1830 (cf. Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, the book not the Broadway musical!) The workers, however, won't realize their potential until 1848.
After 1830, in Western Europe at any rate, the bourgeoisie was firmly in the saddle and the class struggle was underway in ernest. Marx said this "sounded the knell of scientific bourgeois economy." Now truth took a back seat to those Furies of private interest mentioned above. Truth became a question of what "was useful to capital or harmful, expedient or inexpedient, politically dangerous or not."
This been the case ever since-- from Ivy League economic departments to Fox news by and large even , or more especially, today we have in "place of disinterested inquirers" only "hired prize-fighters; in place of genuine scientific research, the bad conscience and evil intent of apologetic." And, we must admit, our Soviet and Chinese comrades were not above apologetics since once in power they were no longer "disinterested inquirers." It will be a big challenge for Marxist leaders, in and out of power, to establish truly disinterested centers of inquiry because only by a true understanding of reality can they hope to be successful and not repeat the tragic errors of the 1930s and 80s.
After 1848 there were a few bourgeois thinkers that recognized the legitimate claims of the workers and tried to "harmonize" them with the interests of capital. One of the best advocates of this harmonious society approach, Marx says, was John Stuart Mill: yet he only produced "a shallow syncretism." Marx then recommends a book about Mill ("Outlines of Political Economy according to Mill") by N. Tschernyschewsky ("the great Russian scholar and critic".) Don't bother trying to look this critic up under this name-- it is a terrible Cyrillic transliteration of the name of the Russian radical materialist proto-Marxist N.G. Chernyshevsky (1828-1889) the title of whose novel "What Is To Be Done" was used by Lenin for his work of the same name.
Now, a few remarks by Marx on his method and his relation to Hegel. Some writers, who should know better, have criticized Marx for the use of Hegelian "jargon" and the Hegelian dialectic in writing Capital. But Marx is quite clear, in the Afterward, this his dialectical method is the "direct opposite" of that of Hegel. Hegel thinks in the language of German Idealism and tries to construct his dialectic around the concept of the "Idea" as the basis of reality. Marx says that he himself studies external reality to see how we come to get the concepts and ideas (including that of the "Idea) in the first place. Completely unlike Hegel, Marx sees "the ideal" as nothing more than "the material world reflected by the human mind...."
With respect to Hegelian "jargon," Marx says he "coquetted" with Hegelian expressions a little in the chapter on value in order to avow himself as "the pupil of that mighty thinker" in response to the "peevish, arrogant, mediocre" critics of the philosopher who had raised their heads in Germany. Despite Hegel's mystifications, he was still the first to work out the form of a dialectical logic "in a comprehensive and conscious manner." With Hegel, Marx says, the dialectical method "is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell." I should also remark that while Marx says his method is the DIRECT OPPOSITE of Hegel's, he and Hegel both believed in the dialectical principle of THE UNITY OF OPPOSITES. This is why Hegel is still read today but from a materialist perspective, and idealists can learn much from Marx.
Finally, it should be noted that even now, in the beginning of the twenty-first century, Marx and his dialectical method are too hot to handle in most economic departments and business schools in the capitalist world. The dialectic is, Marx says, "a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors" because it does not recognize the reality of TINA (there is no alternative to capitalism). The dialectic "includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary." And, so now we move on to:
Engels: Preface to the English Edition, 1886:
One of the things Engels wants to do in this preface is to comment on Marx's use of certain traditional terms in political economy such as "rent," "profit." "commodity," "surplus," etc., which Marx has been accused of using in an idiosyncratic way. Engels agrees that Marx uses some of these terms slightly differently that they were used by his predesessors, but that he is clear about when he does so and the reasons for doing so. "It is," Engels says, "however, self-evident that a theory which views modern capitalist production as a mere passing stage in the economic history of mankind, must make use of terms different from those habitual to writers who look upon that form of production as imperishable and final."
I think Engels thought the revolution to replace capitalism was right around the corner. He says the boom and bust cycles of capitalism between 1825 to 1867 "seems" to be over and we are in "the slough of despond of a permanent chronic depression" and that a future "period of prosperity will not come." Well, he missed out on recognizing the tenacity of the capitalist system. We are now in another "slough of despond" but if it is permanent or not I will not venture to guess. We still have not really answered the great question that Engels says faces the capitalists in every depression: "what to do with the unemployed."
He thinks the unemployed might take matters into their own hands for he says "we can almost calculate when the unemployed losing patience will take their own fate into their own hands." I am afraid we can't calculate that either. But one thing is sure. Engels says Das Kapital is often referred to as "the Bible of the working class." If the workers of the world want to come out of the current crisis on top of the situation they had better start reading their Bible.
Engels in fact makes that very same recommendation in this 1886 preface. The workers might very well be able to come to power in a legal and peaceful way in advanced capitalist countries. In the 1880s England was the most developed country by far and Marx thought that in England the social revolution "might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means." That is what advanced democratic working people should aim for wherever democracy is advanced enough to allow for it. Marx did add that even if the workers achieved victory democratically he expected the ruling class not to submit and to wage a "pro-slavery rebellion" (a reference to the US Civil War).
The challenge facing us now is see how we can deal with the present world economic crisis on the basis of a modern understanding of Marx's great book.
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June 2009 issue of Political Affairs
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Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Backgrounder on John Maynard Keynes
The General Theory and the Current Crisis: A Primer on Keynes’ Economics
The “Revolutionary” Who Wasn’t
By Alejandro Reuss
Dollars and Sense
Keynes is often described as a “revolutionary” thinker. In one sense, this is correct. Keynes was one of the most important economic thinkers of modern times, and his ideas were at the center of a major “paradigm shift” in economic theory and policy. He issued his masterwork, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), at a critical juncture, in the middle of the Great Depression, when the orthodox views from which he had broken seemed at a loss to explain the crisis or a way out of it.
Keynes was not the first major economic theorist to understand that capitalist economies were prone to depressions (Marx had written on the subject nearly a century before), nor was he the only major economist of his generation to arrive at the basic insight that total demand could fall short of the level required to ensure full employment. (Some others, most notably the Polish economist Michal Kalecki, came to the same conclusions separately from, and even slightly earlier than, Keynes.) Keynes, however, was already a major figure in British economics and politics at a time when Britain was a much more important world power than today, so his ideas had a bigger impact in ruling circles than they would have coming from elsewhere, or from economists with a more radical views about the changes necessary to cure the problem.
As “revolutionary” a figure as Keynes was in the history of economic thought, he was, in another sense, a profoundly anti-revolutionary thinker. This is not to say that the changes he proposed, particularly in the role of government in capitalist economies, were trivial. He believed the problems of capitalism—especially the “arbitrary and inequitable” distribution of income and wealth and the “failure to provide full employment”—were very serious, and he did not think that these “outstanding faults” of capitalist economies would fix themselves. He thought that the state would have to play a major role in fixing them. However, as much as it was his goal to get rid of what he considered bad about capitalist societies, he also aimed to preserve what he considered good about them, which was a great deal.
Read more...
The “Revolutionary” Who Wasn’t
By Alejandro Reuss
Dollars and Sense
Keynes is often described as a “revolutionary” thinker. In one sense, this is correct. Keynes was one of the most important economic thinkers of modern times, and his ideas were at the center of a major “paradigm shift” in economic theory and policy. He issued his masterwork, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money (1936), at a critical juncture, in the middle of the Great Depression, when the orthodox views from which he had broken seemed at a loss to explain the crisis or a way out of it.
Keynes was not the first major economic theorist to understand that capitalist economies were prone to depressions (Marx had written on the subject nearly a century before), nor was he the only major economist of his generation to arrive at the basic insight that total demand could fall short of the level required to ensure full employment. (Some others, most notably the Polish economist Michal Kalecki, came to the same conclusions separately from, and even slightly earlier than, Keynes.) Keynes, however, was already a major figure in British economics and politics at a time when Britain was a much more important world power than today, so his ideas had a bigger impact in ruling circles than they would have coming from elsewhere, or from economists with a more radical views about the changes necessary to cure the problem.
As “revolutionary” a figure as Keynes was in the history of economic thought, he was, in another sense, a profoundly anti-revolutionary thinker. This is not to say that the changes he proposed, particularly in the role of government in capitalist economies, were trivial. He believed the problems of capitalism—especially the “arbitrary and inequitable” distribution of income and wealth and the “failure to provide full employment”—were very serious, and he did not think that these “outstanding faults” of capitalist economies would fix themselves. He thought that the state would have to play a major role in fixing them. However, as much as it was his goal to get rid of what he considered bad about capitalist societies, he also aimed to preserve what he considered good about them, which was a great deal.
Read more...
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
Time to Change the Federal Reserve
by Norman Markowitz
Ben Bernanke, Chair of the Federal Reserve is "warning" Congress that "fiscal stimulus packages" meaning social spending and tax policies to increase purchasing power will not be a long term solution to the "credit crisis." Rather he is suggesting that more extensive bank bailouts may be necessary.
Ben Bernanke, Chair of the Federal Reserve is "warning" Congress that "fiscal stimulus packages" meaning social spending and tax policies to increase purchasing power will not be a long term solution to the "credit crisis." Rather he is suggesting that more extensive bank bailouts may be necessary.
Bernanke isn't opposing the present bailout, but it is or should be obvious that he is still thinking in terms of reviving the financial system that he inherited from Alan Greenspan, since he isn't talking about serious reregulaton or any serious connection between finance capital "bailouts" and the job and income security except "old time trickle down religion" which was good enough for Coolidge and Hoover, Reagan, Clinton, and the two Bush presidents.
It is time for Congress to write a new national banking act that makes the chair of the federal reserve directly accountable to Congress and the President and gives the President with the consent of Congress the right to appoint and remove Federal Reserve chairs. It is also time to have the Federal Reserve work in concert with the Treasury and the Federal Government as a whole as part of a national economic program.
Although the "monetarism" most associated with the late Milton Friedman and carried forward in the U.S. by Alan Greenspan on the Fed has failed completely, a point that President Elect Obama made during the campaign without specifically mentioning monetarism or Friedman, monetary policy in conjunction with fiscal policy remains important in both containing the economic crisis and developing a healthy national economy based on higher real wages, greater overall labor skill, and greater income inequality, not mountains of debt and deepening income
inequality which has characterized the last thirty years of U.S. economic policy.
The Obama administration is hitting the ground running by focusing on the economic crisis and preparing to deal with it in its first days. This compares very favorably with Bill Clinton, who began his administration as if he had a hangover, half-heartedly and unsuccessfully advocated a modest fiscal stimulus package and then went on to one domestic policy disaster after another, seeking to win over the Republican opposition who handed him his lunch while he alienated the progressive mass constituencies of his party.
But Obama has a much taller order than just being a lot better than Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter. Large numbers of Americans, and not just older Americans, expect him to be another Franklin Roosevelt, an agent of major , progressive change , of a new age of social-economic reform that will make future generations of Americans remember Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush the way Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover were remembered after WWII, as relics of a discredited period of history.
Obama, like Franklin Roosevelt, has talked about "action and action now." He should start next week, both with fiscal policies to confront the economic crisis, policies to protect workers and
homeowners and regulate the way that the banks use the billions that they are getting, and also policies that change the Federal Reserve system, so that the chair of the Federal Reserve will no longer be the second most powerful "public official" in the U.S. with no serious accountability to the elected federal government.
Monday, November 24, 2008
Reflections on the (Unplanned) Death of an Ideology
The financial meltdown on Wall Street has provoked a severe ideological crisis. Capitalism itself is under scrutiny. In the corporate media, one can now find regular discussions of Marxism, capitalism and socialism – not always positively presented to be sure, but at times the discussion has been thoughtful.
read the whole story here...
read the whole story here...
Monday, October 20, 2008
Latest Washington Post Spin on Ideology and the Crisis
From Washington Post:
Read the whole thing here....
If only the markets had been freer, with less oversight, with fewer consumer protections, with no rights for workers, with no environmental protections, with no barriers to trade, no limits on any activity, no matter how destructive or anarchistic.... If only.
IS THIS the end of American capitalism? As financial panic spread across the globe and governments scrambled to contain the damage, reality seemed to announce the doom of U.S.-style free markets and President Bush's ideology. But this is wrong in two ways. The deregulation of U.S. financial markets did not reflect only the narrow ideology of a particular party or administration. And the problem with the U.S. economy, more than lack of regulation, has been government's failure to control systemic risks that government itself helped to create. We are not witnessing a crisis of the free market but a crisis of distorted markets.
Read the whole thing here....
If only the markets had been freer, with less oversight, with fewer consumer protections, with no rights for workers, with no environmental protections, with no barriers to trade, no limits on any activity, no matter how destructive or anarchistic.... If only.
Thursday, September 18, 2008
"Relief for the Greedy, Not for the Needy"
by Norman Markowitz
Mass media is talking about Wall Street "greed. "McCain and Palin, the candidates of the party that Wall Street has supported in virtually every election at least since 1884 are also denouncing "greed." Rightwing economists are 'accusing" the Bush administration of violating the sacred principles of free market policy, going "further" than any Democratic administration, and sending bad signals to the rest of the developed world, which in the past it has led toward a "return" to the holy land of "laissez-faire" capitalism, away from the captivity of government regulation.
Mass media is talking about Wall Street "greed. "McCain and Palin, the candidates of the party that Wall Street has supported in virtually every election at least since 1884 are also denouncing "greed." Rightwing economists are 'accusing" the Bush administration of violating the sacred principles of free market policy, going "further" than any Democratic administration, and sending bad signals to the rest of the developed world, which in the past it has led toward a "return" to the holy land of "laissez-faire" capitalism, away from the captivity of government regulation.
What is really happening. Barack Obama's comment that this far-reaching crisis is the final verdict on an economic philosophy which has completely failed is a good starting point to understand the present moment. The U.S. government and European governments are pouring hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars or their Euro equivalents into deregulated banks and brokerage houses and the insurers of those institutions. While this may be necessary to prevent a rapid global depression (since the "free market" is not now nor has it ever been "self-correcting." Only, I would say, a lunatic or a "neo-liberal" ideologue would contend that leaders should let the market take its course, "ride out the storm."
But, the sort of state intervention that we are seeing today is intervention from the top in order to save the top, the sort of intervention that even Herbert Hoover accepted in 1932 when the Reconstruction Finance Corporation was created to loan money to banks and other institutions faced with collapse. It is, as Franklin Roosevelt said about a different issue during WWII, the attempt by the conservative coalition in Congress to oppose a program of progressive taxation to pay for the war, a policy of "relief for the greedy, not for the needy." It is also a continuation of the sort of policies that the Reagan administration was compelled to enact when they "bailed out" the Savings and Loan industry from the disastrous speculative collapse that their deregulation policies brought about.
As Marxists we must say over and over again that capitalism as it develops is about the creation of monopoly for private profit, about the use of the state to subsidize the activities of the capitalist class as completely as possible, subsidizing speculation and bailout out failure. According to mass media, the Bush administration has already pumped in nearly half a trillion into the system (near about one year of military industrial complex budget expenditures) and few are talking about comprehensive "re regulation," action to deal with the unregulated global hedge funds, reviving long buried concepts like "excess profits" as part of a policy that would connect progressive taxation to a general regulatory policy that would punish rather than reward predatory speculation.
As Marxists we see the crisis as structural, long-term, and not resolvable ultimately under capitalism, which was the position that Marxists took in the Great Depression of the 1930s.
But that does not mean that we are the left equivalents of the free marketeers, waiting for the collapse and the revolution as they wait for the revival if the "free market" remains "free." We understand that state fiscal policy, taxation and regulation are necessary to protect the interests of the working class. The policies we have advocated in the past are very different from those which the representatives of the capitalist class have advocated and continue to advocate. When they were implemented they were generally successful. In an updated form, they remain vital today, although of course they are not necessarily the only short and medium term solutions.
We support what in the depression was called a "tax on wealth," meaning a serious program of taxing corporate capital and wealthy individuals and families through taxes on high incomes, investments, business transactions, for the purpose of subsidizing the working class in the form of employment and social welfare. We also as in the past, see public ownership and control of sections of the economy, including partial or complete nationalization of banking as a serious option. We reject the "trickle down" theory in all of its expressions and start with the principle that state intervention in the economy is necessary to save the working class and that state policies and subsidies should be centered on the working class and on those sections of capital whose policies expand working class employment and purchasing power.
On that basis we can begin to work with liberals and progressives and influence them to move in that direction. On that basis we can provide masses of frightened and "hungry" working class people with serious nourishment for their understanding, not the junk food that mass media is providing, the choice between "free markets" and capitalist bailouts, which is like a choice between Big Macs and Whoppers.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
CPUSA, Nat'l Cmte., March 30th – Report on the Environment
Marc Brodine, a member of the national board of the CPUSA and the chair of the Communist Party in Washington State, delivered a report on the impact of global warming, its causes and consequences.
"Global warming," he said, "is not just an inconvenient truth." Global warming has to be examined within a larger context of capitalism and other environmental problems.
"We can't have a healthy humanity without a healthy natural world," he said.
He tied environmental degradation to capitalism. Increased capitalist exploitation of nature will result in serious crisis, he said. "We can either work with nature or nature will work against us," he argued. "Capitalism is playing with the survival of humanity for short-term profit," he noted.
Climate crisis is not the only severe environmental problem facing us. Depletion of fishing, soil, and fresh water supplies, animal extinctions, the spread of disease-causing pollutants, desertification, and growing air and water pollution are among the most severe.
"Even in the best case scenario, global warming requires immediate and dramatic action," Brodine said.
Brodine insisted that political changes are required, including democratization of the political process, public policy, and economic decision-making. These changes need to happen in order to move in the right direction and to mitigate the destructive policies of the Bush administration and the worst actions off the big transnational polluters.
Immediate action is needed because global warming threatens to transform the earth's climate systems in a very short period of time and create environments that are hostile to human survival never before experienced by developed humanity.
The earth is getting hotter, but global climate change has other features: in some places more rain and more flooding; in others less rain and more drought; in some places more snowfall next to glacier melt; flooding; and so on.
It is caused by the accumulation of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere trapping the sun's heat, warming the air and the land.
This is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
"It is caused by human activity and can be slowed by human activity," Brodine said.
Social consequences include food and fresh water shortages leading to political competition for these dwindling resources.
"We can't profit our way to a solution," Brodine said. "But neither can we wait for socialism. Economic development that doesn't destroy the environment is required."
Some basic solutions are readily available but need political struggle to implement: green construction, production of hybrid vehicles, mass transit, alternative energy products like solar and wind, reduce mechanized industrial food production and increase labor-intense small agriculture, and major conservation efforts.
Brodine addressed current environmental action. "The biggest problem is not caused by individuals but by a system that privileges profit over people and nature," he said.
Capitalists are to blame for the crisis, but tend to try to shift the blame to ordinary folk, workers and the poor. They seek solutions that put the burden on us rather than on the policies and actions they take that cause the problem.
Some solutions that are being put forward by big industry are either partial solutions or untested or are very problematic steps. Biofuels, for example, drive up the cost of food or cause food shortages. "It means solving an energy problem by creating a food problem," Brodine stated.
Cap and trade schemes aren't enough.
Promotion of nuclear and "clean coal" are untested and present their own significant problems.
Brodine urged the formation of multi-issue broad-based coalitions that link environmental issues to public policy and other political struggles.
The working class, nationally and internationally, is the only force that can win and implement the changes needed.
Globally, people who contribute least global warming are paying the highest price as a result of climate change.
International reforms should include transforming international financial institutions and ending exploitative debt policies imposed on developing countries; transfer of green technology to developing countries; and implementing binding global agreements that enforce reduction of greenhouse emissions and fossil fuel usage.
Brodine pointed out that the Communist Party has a special role in winning the international communist movement to this agenda.
He urged that the environmental question be injected into all of the struggles people are involved in. The labor, youth, peace and equality movements have a significant contribution to make on the issue.
Individual actions are necessary but not sufficient to bring the change needed, he said.
Brodine proposed the expansion of the party's education on the question and the reconstitution of the party's environmental commission.
"Global warming," he said, "is not just an inconvenient truth." Global warming has to be examined within a larger context of capitalism and other environmental problems.
"We can't have a healthy humanity without a healthy natural world," he said.
He tied environmental degradation to capitalism. Increased capitalist exploitation of nature will result in serious crisis, he said. "We can either work with nature or nature will work against us," he argued. "Capitalism is playing with the survival of humanity for short-term profit," he noted.
Climate crisis is not the only severe environmental problem facing us. Depletion of fishing, soil, and fresh water supplies, animal extinctions, the spread of disease-causing pollutants, desertification, and growing air and water pollution are among the most severe.
"Even in the best case scenario, global warming requires immediate and dramatic action," Brodine said.
Brodine insisted that political changes are required, including democratization of the political process, public policy, and economic decision-making. These changes need to happen in order to move in the right direction and to mitigate the destructive policies of the Bush administration and the worst actions off the big transnational polluters.
Immediate action is needed because global warming threatens to transform the earth's climate systems in a very short period of time and create environments that are hostile to human survival never before experienced by developed humanity.
The earth is getting hotter, but global climate change has other features: in some places more rain and more flooding; in others less rain and more drought; in some places more snowfall next to glacier melt; flooding; and so on.
It is caused by the accumulation of greenhouses gases in the atmosphere trapping the sun's heat, warming the air and the land.
This is primarily caused by the burning of fossil fuels.
"It is caused by human activity and can be slowed by human activity," Brodine said.
Social consequences include food and fresh water shortages leading to political competition for these dwindling resources.
"We can't profit our way to a solution," Brodine said. "But neither can we wait for socialism. Economic development that doesn't destroy the environment is required."
Some basic solutions are readily available but need political struggle to implement: green construction, production of hybrid vehicles, mass transit, alternative energy products like solar and wind, reduce mechanized industrial food production and increase labor-intense small agriculture, and major conservation efforts.
Brodine addressed current environmental action. "The biggest problem is not caused by individuals but by a system that privileges profit over people and nature," he said.
Capitalists are to blame for the crisis, but tend to try to shift the blame to ordinary folk, workers and the poor. They seek solutions that put the burden on us rather than on the policies and actions they take that cause the problem.
Some solutions that are being put forward by big industry are either partial solutions or untested or are very problematic steps. Biofuels, for example, drive up the cost of food or cause food shortages. "It means solving an energy problem by creating a food problem," Brodine stated.
Cap and trade schemes aren't enough.
Promotion of nuclear and "clean coal" are untested and present their own significant problems.
Brodine urged the formation of multi-issue broad-based coalitions that link environmental issues to public policy and other political struggles.
The working class, nationally and internationally, is the only force that can win and implement the changes needed.
Globally, people who contribute least global warming are paying the highest price as a result of climate change.
International reforms should include transforming international financial institutions and ending exploitative debt policies imposed on developing countries; transfer of green technology to developing countries; and implementing binding global agreements that enforce reduction of greenhouse emissions and fossil fuel usage.
Brodine pointed out that the Communist Party has a special role in winning the international communist movement to this agenda.
He urged that the environmental question be injected into all of the struggles people are involved in. The labor, youth, peace and equality movements have a significant contribution to make on the issue.
Individual actions are necessary but not sufficient to bring the change needed, he said.
Brodine proposed the expansion of the party's education on the question and the reconstitution of the party's environmental commission.
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Poll: 3 in 5 Venezuelans Choose Socialism Over Capitalism
A recent press release from the Venezuelan President's Office reads:
Just 3.4% Venezuelans think capitalism is the best system of government according to the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez as he referred to a poll conducted by a Venezuelan pollster called Seijas.During his weekly radio and TV show ¡Aló, Presidente!, President Hugo Chávez stressed that the poll called Barometro de Gestión y Coyuntura Política (Barometer of Management and Political Situation), conducted between September 20 and September 30, shows interesting results.In this regard, he highlighted that just 3.4% Venezuelans think capitalism is the best system of government, and 22.6% would choose capitalism over socialism, while 62.7% would choose socialism.The Venezuelan president said that these figures are historical since Venezuela’s progressive movements never achieved more than 10%.Regarding the Constitutional Reform, President Chávez said that this poll shows that 50.6% interviewees think it was necessary, while 47.3% think it will bring benefits to the country.President Chávez also talked about the deep debate about the Constitutional Reform. He said it has been much more active than the debate about the referendum to approve the 1999 Bolivarian Constitution. Likewise, he insisted that it was necessary to reduce the historical abstention levels.Presidential Press Office / October 8, 2007
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