[forotis]

http://www.humaniteinenglish.com/spip.php?article1121

Karl Marx and the Lessons of "Capital" Are Back

Translated mardi 13 janvier 2009, par Isabelle Metral

Whether as a philosopher, economist, and anthropologist, the author of “Capital” and the persistent relevance of his analyses are justified by the major crisis which now defies the premises of global capitalism.

« If Marx imposes himself as one of the “unsurpassable” thinkers of our time, the reason is also, and mostly, that he was the first to detect the dynamics intrinsic to capitalism. ». These are not the words of some obscure, antediluvian follower of Marx, but the pronouncement of Alain Minc, the businessman, essayist and counsellor who has the ear of the French President, in an interview recently published in Le Magazine Littéraire [1]. The review, which made so bold as to devote thirty pages to Marx’s works, wonders about what it calls « the reasons for a rebirth ».

As the British historian Eric Hobsbawn himself humorously observes, « It is the capitalists, more than the others, who are re-discovering Marx »”– like George Soros, another financier and pro-market politician who recently confided to him : « I am reading Marx just now ; there are quite a few interesting things in what he said ! »

That Marx, who has long been dead and buried, is now back in favour may seem paradoxical. But is it so very strange ? « It is not surprising that intelligent capitalists, especially in the field of global finance, should have been impressed by Marx, », Hobsbawn observes, « since they have necessarily been more keenly aware than the others of the nature and instability of the capitalist economy in which they operated. » [2]. Naturally, these capitalists should not be expected to give up the system that crowned them and that gives them a hold on the whole of society : they are not going to become converts to socialism any time soon. That is not in their interest – far from it – they most certainly (George Soros among them) still entertain the notion that they may turn the present crisis to to their own advantage and increase their profits, since the crisis whets their appetite for speculation even as it increases the risks…

That’s the law of the system, the domination of the bourgeoisie that Marx and Engel depicted in The Communist Manifesto in 1848, long before his main work Capital (1867), as a period marked off from all previous periods by « a continuous upheaval of production », « a social system in a complete state of permanent commotion », « restlessness » and « perpetual insecurity ».

Can Marx help us see our way through the crisis ?

As economist Jean-Marie Harribey observes, the fact is « that one might draw up an impressive list of publications at the service of capitalistic interests that draw upon Marx’s critique of capitalism to try and find their way through the erratic movements of their own system ». Thus, Harribey further notes, from The Financial Times to The Wall Street Journal through The Economist and the London Daily Telegraph which declared that « October 13, 2008 shall remain in history as the day when the British capitalist system admitted to having failed », commentators are forced to concede that the sacrosanct « law of the market has proved incapable of guaranteeing a sound equilibrium, stability, prosperity or equity » and that, all in all, Marx had been fairly perspicacious.

« It is urgent to re-discover his thought, which is too often reduced to a few famous quotations », insists journalist Patrice Bolton, who coordinated the Marx dossier for Le Magazine Littéraire. It is once more a recourse for decrypting a globalization « that multiplies job losses and sends inequalities between countries rocketing, as well as inequalities between social classes within each country. » Not forgetting the succession of speculative bubbles that result in the impoverishment of a growing portion of the population.

In such a context, beyond the historical differences that make it illusory to transpose the situation directly from one century to the next, Karl Marx is enjoying a second youth. But « which Marx », the review asks, is it « the economist, the sociologist, the philosopher, or the political activist » ? But must we really choose ? What if it was precisely the diversity of those « hats », their superimposition and connections that made for the high topicality of his perspicacious, unclassifiable works today ?

Marx indeed attempted to decrypt the movement of history, the economy, production, value, capital, labour force, money, commodity, consumption, credit, social relations, class struggle, but also the exploitation, alienation, individualization, the possibility of emancipation and of transcending dominations as so many moments in a global movement, in a series of constantly evolving contradictions that make it possible to characterize precisely the singularity, the specificity of a mode of production at any particular time in human history. This approach to contradictions makes it possible to understand why global finance capital is now pushing the logic of profitability to a paroxysm, and why capitalism, as communist economist Paul Boccara [3] shows, is « exponential capitalism », a system that sets money above everything else in order to make more money to the detriment of people’s lives – an irreversible system, which cannot be expected to go back to « old time capitalism ».

In an article published by le Monde diplomatique [4], the philosopher Lucien Sève himself notes that « if the crisis broke out in the credit sphere, its devastating power had been building up in the sphere of production owing to the increasingly unequal distribution of surplus value between capital and labour ». And he goes on to remind us of Mark’s illuminating insight (in Capital, Book I) that : « All the means that are aimed at developing production are conversely as many means of domination and exploitation of the producer », or again (…) that « the accumulation of riches at one pole » has a reverse side which is « the proportional accumulation of destitution » at the other pole, from which, Sève further observes, « the premises of violent trading and banking crises will originate ».

The crisis being systemic, it can only repeat itself and get worse. That is why putting the origin of the crisis down to the excessive volatility of sophisticated financial products is of little avail. To « moralize » capitalism, to restore it to « greater transparency », as proposed by Nicolas Sarkozy, are slogans that are all just for show if the very logic of the system is left untouched, namely the dictatorship of finance, the search for maximum profit. « Faced with a system whose blatant incapacity to regulate itself has such an inordinate cost for us, our aim right now must be to transcend capitalism, and set out on the long march towards a new social organization where human beings, through novel forms of association, will all together control their own social power which has gone berserk », Lucien Sève insists. There lies yet another timely lesson still to be learned from Karl Marx, albeit out of the depths of philosophical oblivion... __________________________________________________ ____

Footnotes

[1] N° 479, October 2008.

[2] The interview was published by the Centre helvétique d’études marxistes(Swiss centre for Marxist studies) on Occtober 17, 2008.

[3] l’Humanité, October 16.

[4] December 2008.

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[teridbruse]

No lie.

[Vmysobfi]

The Groucho joke was quite funny the first time I heard it 30 years ago. Over the course of the 500 times I've heard it since it has become tediously dull and predictable.

Another predictable thing is the regular, recurring crisis of capitalism that Marx quite correctly observed. It's odd how many 'classical' economists happily ignore this until a really big and scary crisis punches them in the face and raises the spectre of an economy so seriously broken that prospects for recovery seem faint and remote.

However, as The Man said - Philosophers seek to understand the world. The point is to change it. Where should that change come from? Certainly not above, for when the ruling elite act to control capitalism in serious crisis the outcome can tend towards fascism rather than social democracy. Marx's solution saw the agency of the wealth-creators (workers, not capitalists) as the driving force. Few such organisations exist today, because of the failures of stalinism and the western labour movements of the past.

I'm also wary of 'plastic communists' - nihilistic, petty-bourgeois youth who think that an anti-capitalism of throwing objects through the windows of starbucks is the way forward, rather than a coherent, rational advancement of productive forces.

[iH1wMOhE]

tldr. Marx was wrong, the power is in distribution and marketing rather than production ownership.

[Leaters]

It's hard to distribute something not produced.

QFT.

The exception, perhaps, is the selling of money that doesn't exist - and we've seen where that road can go to.

[sasaderesada]

Originally Posted by SlowwHand It's hard to distribute something not produced.

QFT.

The exception, perhaps, is the selling of money that doesn't exist - and we've seen where that road can go to. On the other hand, it's equally hard to profitably produce something neither distributed nor marketed, unless the producer vertically integrates those links of the chain, which is theoretically possible (e.g. a record company also owning record stores, trucks to supply them, and publishers & broadcasters to advertise for them) but rarely feasible because the cost of such acquisitions will typically exceed the transaction costs of simply contracting with people who already fully specialize in distribution and marketing.

The real question is whether distribution and marketing ought to be simply folded into the definition of "means of production," regardless of whether Marx did so.

[illerlytoindy]

The real question is whether distribution and marketing ought to be simply folded into the definition of "means of production," regardless of whether Marx did so.

He didn't really, and that's one of his major mistakes.

He thought that as the efficiency of factories would increase, so would the size of a disenfranchised unemployed proletariat. He just didn't realize that most people would end up selling services, and that their living conditions could be decent.

[r5YOPDyk]

If he foresaw so little, why should we give so much weight to any of his predictions?

I'd rather see more theorists build on his work to adequately assess 21st-century circumstances than have Marx be "back."

I think most Marxists would agree with you on that. Some fundamentals remain fruitful; other things have to be rethought. A good example of newer marxism is the analysis of society through the prism of the 'small bourgeoisie', i.e. the workers with no capital selling services.

[Phywhewashect]

There's the rub. For so many Marxists, questioning Marx is like questioning God. Yet, one of the most important things Marx ever wrote is not applied to Marx himself, "question everything!" Marx himself wrote that his earlier writings had been superseded by time. In his introduction to the Communist Manifesto in 1873, he wrote that much of the Manifesto was obsolete, but that as it was an historical document, he had no right to change it. Given that it was a programmatic statement of an actual political organization, Marx is correct, but it would have been nice for him to do it anyway. No one remembers the Communist League anymore. Everyone still knows who Marx was.

[BigMovies]

If he foresaw so little, why should we give so much weight to any of his predictions?

Reasonable people don't. Unreasonable people are more interested in his "dictatorship of the proletariat" to buttress their own ambitions.

[AlexDatig]

Damn right, OB. Not sure when the last time was that proselytising for the dictatorship of the proletariat was a sound career move.

[Eromereorybig]

There's the rub. For so many Marxists, questioning Marx is like questioning God. Yet, one of the most important things Marx ever wrote is not applied to Marx himself, "question everything!" Marx himself wrote that his earlier writings had been superseded by time. In his introduction to the Communist Manifesto in 1873, he wrote that much of the Manifesto was obsolete, but that as it was an historical document, he had no right to change it. Given that it was a programmatic statement of an actual political organization, Marx is correct, but it would have been nice for him to do it anyway. No one remembers the Communist League anymore. Everyone still knows who Marx was.

I am being sincere

I think that the problem for communists is that all they have to offer is the proletarian dictatorship with economies planned by the state.

The state will never disappear and the ideal communist society will never be reached. Those are the most kingdom of heaven/religious aspects of marxism.

If I were a commie I would look at the soviet experience and think, what could we have done better to make the "soviet" citizens happier? Ang go from there (spend more in consumer good, give them freedom of religion, etc)

[Gmvkgkmn]

I think Marx had some very interesting observations about mid-19th century capitalism. Some of those observations remain relevant today, even though we've come a long way since his time (in no small part due to Marxists/labor movements), even considering the last ~30 years of conservative pushback in the US.

Having said that, I still don't think his ideas are a good template for a society. To be fair to the guy, it's not like anyone else seems to have come up with the magic bullet either.

-Arrian

[everlastinge]

To be fair, there is a WORLD of difference between the government using monetary or fiscal policy to create incentives that distort the free market (and thus are fundamentally dependent on the free market and the invisible hand) and state-run industry.

Of course, but "capitalism is dead", "friedman is responsible for this" yells and other varieties of blaming the "free markets" for the current mess at best do not paint a full picture, and at worst attempt to whitewash what probably were the worst government mistakes in the economic area, ever.

[Kragh]

Reading Marx is not good for you. Either you dont believe what he wrote and it´s a waste of time, or you believe in what he wrote and from then on, you´ll have to watch out for what you are saying among certain people. Like Nietzsche: Read, understand and get depressed, or read, dont understand, and have lots of time wasted... (thats why i stopped after 100 pages or so of the later).

Not entirely true. You can read, understand, but still not believe it. I read the "Communist Manifesto" and Engel's "Scientific Socialism" (which is a better pamphlet, btw). I understood them. I just didn't agree with them. They brought out some good points, but I couldn't go with them to where they were going. Of course, "Capital" is the far better work.

And you don't always have to get depressed if you read and understand Nietzsche.

Well, I guess unless he burst your bubble about absolute morality .

[k1ePRlda]

He didn't really, and that's one of his major mistakes.

He thought that as the efficiency of factories would increase, so would the size of a disenfranchised unemployed proletariat. He just didn't realize that most people would end up selling services, and that their living conditions could be decent.

Most people don't sell services. The industrialized nations just moved all the manufacturing jobs overseas.

[Kneeniasy]

The market cannot "fail for good." People need food, clothing, shelter, etc., and need some method to trade their labor for these things. The FORM of the market can change. Hegel led us with his spirit of the state theories into believing that either capitalists must own the state or the state must own the means of production. Marx expanded the historical understanding of how capitalism had grown and postulated state ownership in which the state would magically fade away. How such a failed theory could "make a comeback" is beyond me. However, his historical analysis is still very useful, identifying weaknesses and obviously inadequate reactions to opportunities and crises inherent in the form. These insights should not be lost, but only emerge when the next crisis occurs. Communism as posed by Marx's followers failed with the fall of the Soviet Union. Fascism (or more realistically, National Socialism) failed with Nazi Germany. It makes no sense for us to revive Hegel's alternatives when both have already failed. We need to move on to a new dialectic to address the conflict between greed (renamed for scientific purposes) and whatever we're going to call greed's antithesis.

[AnetTeilor]

Do you know anything about market failures? During the depression food sat on the side of the road while people went hungry because no one wanted to pay to have it delivered to market.

QFT. The image that sticks best in my mind was of shotgun-wielding guards keeping starving people away from huge piles of oranges that were left to rot in the sun... in order for the price of oranges to increase.

[CealialactBek]

Can someone give me a real-life example of a Marxist system or policy that succeeded in its aims?

[ThzinChang]

The Soviet Union managed to develop the country and give its citizens an acceptable standard of living. And that while investing half of the budget in military stuff.

That was the big problem of the Soviet Union, when you have enough nukes to destroy the world, why do you need to spend so much money in the military?

They should have dedicated themselves to making better cars, better tvs to make the citizens happier.