From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@msn.com)
Date: Mon Nov 18 2002 - 20:01:15 EST
Re: [OPE-L:8013] Re: Re: Re: Re: Robert BrennerRe the exchange between Paul B and Rakesh (see excerpts below):
I would suggest a third position. I agree with Rakesh that the capitalist
system must be conceptualized in a 'holistic' sense but agree with Paul
that the reality of nation states must also be grasped.
Here's an outline of _a_ way of conceptualizing capitalism as a totality:
I. *Simple unity*
At the level of analysis of 'capital in general' there is simple unity within
both the capitalist class and the working class. This is an abstraction,
however, which doesn't grasp other necessary moments in a
comprehension of capitalism as a totality, e.g. it doesn't grasp class
subjectivity and divisions, the state, trade, or the world market and
crisis.
II. *Diversity*
Here capital is divided within separate national states with sovereignty.
We see then that there is not only competition by individual capitals but
also rivalry among nation states. The relation between national capitals
and nation-states is framed by uneven development (highlighted by
Lenin) or uneven and combined development (if you prefer Trotsky's
formulation). Capital-in-diversity gives rise to (and/or perpetuates)
nationalism and hence national chauvinism. Other forms of class
divisions -- including those within the working-class -- must also be
grasped.
III. *Unity-In-Diversity*
*Only here* can capitalism be grasped as a totality. Here this totality
is comprehended more than just one-sidedly as 'simple unity' (a
conception sometimes held by those who advance the thesis of
'globalization') or one-sidedly as diversity (which Rakesh perhaps
warns against). Only when the 'world market and crisis' is grasped
can the puzzle be pieced together in its entirety. We observe here
other trends: e.g. the increasing international concentration and
centralization of capital brings about multinational corporations (or
transnational corporations, if you prefer) which both subsist with
and come into conflict with individual states. Also, the bonding
together of individual states for mutual economic protection and
advantage -- thus the creation of 'regional trade associations'
such as the European Union, which subsists with and comes into
conflict with other nation-states, federations, and units of
international capital. Also, the changing relation between expanding
capitalist social relations on a global scale and the persistence of
pre-capitalist relations and the 'drive' by the working-class towards
the 'new historic form'. The world market, Marx tells us in the
_Grundrisse_ is:
"the conclusion, in which production is posited as a totality
together with all its moments, but within which, at the same
time, all contradictions come into play. The world market
then, again, forms the presupposition of the whole as well as
the substratum. Crises are then, the general intimation which
points beyond the presupposition, and the urge which
drives towards the adoption of the new historic form" (Penguin
edition, pp. 227-28)
This conclusion is consistent with Paul B's emphasis in [8010] that
imperialism, anti-imperialism, worker internationalism and revolution
must all be grasped together.
Paul and Rakesh and others: [other than being very abstract, but no
more abstract I think than Rakesh's 8019 and Paul's 8021], what is wrong
with the above?
In solidarity, Jerry
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>From Paul B's [8021]:
> I have always been a 'holist' in that sense and I have no doubt that Spinoza was a great influence on Marx there. But the social relation requires enforcement, and the extension of that enforcement has taken the form of replications of the 'nation state model' ( even where there were many 'nations' incorporated in a State) by the bourgeoisie as it has advanced and conquered previous social systems. One cannot ignore the reality of the state, or the conflict of the most powerful capitalists shielding behind the most expensive and powerful state machinery. Neverthless 'the relation itself ' is the 'prius' when understanding the general issues.<
>From Rakesh's [8019]:
> Re 8013: >
Perhaps Rakesh you could explain how anti imperialism excludes 'worker internationalism' ?
It need not. I was trying to get at another point: capital as global social relation is more than a mere aggregate of national economies which impinge on each other. Anti imperialist discourse seems to take as the fundamental unit of analysis the national economy; one national economy dominates another through for example the export of capital. As biological reductionists such as John Maynard Smith tend to view the organism as the nothing more than a site for intragenomic conflict, I am saying that Marxists often seem to undertand the world capitalist market as nothing but the site for conflict among capitalist nations. But the organism of capital as a global social relation has ontological and conceptual priority over the apparently self subsistent national economies out of which it is composed. In short, I am making a rather weak suggestion for a kind of holism in the analysis of the capitalist system. Cyrus Bina and John Holloway have also argued for a kind of holism though on different grounds. <
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Nov 20 2002 - 00:00:01 EST