From: Paul Bullock (paulbullock@ebms-ltd.co.uk)
Date: Mon Nov 18 2002 - 17:11:37 EST
Re: [OPE-L:8013] Re: Re: Re: Re: Robert BrennerRakesh,
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.
paul.
----- Original Message -----
From: Rakesh Bhandari
To: ope-l@galaxy.csuchico.edu
Sent: Monday, November 18, 2002 5:01 PM
Subject: [OPE-L:8019] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Robert Brenner
re 8013
Perhaps Rakesh you could explain how anti imperialism excludes 'worker internationalism' ?
Thanks
Paul Bullock
Paul,
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.
yours, rb
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