From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Fri Jun 29 2007 - 21:03:31 EDT
>Thanks Jurriaan.. I found the quote, but as you say not the source yet. > cite is given footnote 156 on p. 268 of Rick's biography. It seems that Rick has quoted Juegen Scheele quoting from a file of unpublished manuscripts by Grossman. My sense is the quote is from 1932. >Paul B. > >----- Original Message ----- >From: <mailto:adsl675281@TISCALI.NL>Jurriaan Bendien >To: <mailto:OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU>OPE-L@SUS.CSUCHICO.EDU >Sent: Tuesday, June 26, 2007 8:51 PM >Subject: [OPE-L] Grossman and the theory of capitalist collapse > >The source is ><http://www.marxists.org/archive/grossman/>http://www.marxists.org/archive/grossman/ where >it's printed as a caption quote in grey, at the top of the page. >However, the source of the caption is not stated. I cannot yet trace >the source in Grossman's published texts. Presumably the comment was >made after 1929. I suggest you consult Rick Kuhn. > >However Grossman is wrong in stating that Hilferding or Bauer >believed a breakdown was "impossible". They had, after all, observed >the ravages of world war I and its aftermath. The question was more >one of a conjunctural type: how likely was a deep slump in the given >circumstances? What would be its magnitude? What were the political >implications? > >The notion of a breakdown is however somewhat ambiguous itself, >because what is a real "breakdown" (Zusammenbruch)? Grossman aims to >show that after N number of cycles, insufficient surplus value is >generated to valorise the mass of capital assets, the rate of profit >falls, and eventually the system collapses. But supposing that he is >right, what prevents a mutation of the system in a way which >revalues assets, changes allocative principles and changes property >rights? You may possibly be able to demonstrate a necessary >long-term trend in capital structures, but an economic collapse does >not logically follow from it. > >During the great depression, production and circulation never >"collapsed" totally, even with seriously debased currency (my >grandfather once gave me an old banknote of a million Reichsmarks, >claiming that at a certain point it would have taken a barrowful of >these notes to buy groceries, and that people therefore bartered >instead). Between summer 1929 and early 1932, German unemployment >rose from just under 1.3 million to 6 million. The unemployment rate >rose from 4.5% to 24% of the labour force. Real GDP declined >absolutely by 8.3 percent from early 1931, average real weekly wages >declined 2.5% per year until mid-1935. (Nicholas H. Dimsdale, >Nicholas Horsewood and Arthur van Riel, "Unemployment and real wages >in Weimar Germany". Uni of Oxford Discussion Papers in Economics and >Social History, no. 56, 2004). That was depression, not collapse. I >thumbnail-sketched the impact and recovery from world war 2 here: ><http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation#Capital_accumulation_and_military_wars>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_accumulation#Capital_accumulation_and_military_wars > >I think that you can find real examples of the collapse of societies >in history, where people literally died like flies from lack of food >and water, but few collapses are absolute, in the sense that a >social order totally disintegrates. As soon as the normal trading >pattern becomes impossible, and one's life is at stake, prevailing >property relations are no longer respected, and people seize >whatever they need to survive, or barter. > >When I lived in New Zealand in 1985, the Labour Government began to >apply neoliberal shock therapy, ripping up all protectionist >measures, eradicating most subsidies, and staging a privatisation >sell-out. At that time, I and my friends thought the avalanche of >events would inaugur a pre-revolutionary political crisis. That did >not happen with the given qualities of consciousness; the most that >happened, other than business failures, rising unemployment and some >feeble protest, was that the net outward emigration flow for some >years was proportionally similar to East Germany after the Wende, >and that the Labour Party eventually split, after masses of workers >had already voted with their feet. The maximum permitted inflation >rate was fixed by legal statute. All this excitement taught me, that >the anxiety of collapse was not wellfounded, and that a theory of >collapse would actually have to specify what a collapse would >consist in. > >There exists a literature on collapsing societies, both historical >(Joseph Tainter, Jared Diamond etc.) and contemporary (e.g. with >regard to the "transitional economies" of the ex-Soviet Bloc, >Argentina, Zimbabwe etc.) but it is mostly not a Marxist literature. >I think that when Marxists raise the spectre of collapse, they ought >to base themselves on real facts and not rhetoric. A general >collapse of capitalism through economic dislocations is very >unlikely, at most you can say that the social order in particular >countries or regions can collapse for mainly economic reasons. >Perhaps a better perspective is that of Mike Davis, who portrays in >various ways the gradual "rotting" of the foundations of traditional >bourgeois society, in terms of what this means for human relations >and the people who no longer fit easily in these relations, and how >unanticipated events can spell disaster (the great influenza >pandemic of 1918 killed more people than the world war did!). > >As a digression, more realistic than the spectre of collapse, is the >spectre of wars, which Mr Bush focuses upon a lot, with a military >mind-set. Generally people fight wars because they think they can >win something by them, or to defend what they think is rightfully >theirs or claim as theirs. But what if you can effectively do >neither, in important respects? You can still have a conflict in >some way, obviously, but it begins to take very different forms. >I noted cyber wars; there are also resource wars and guerilla wars >of various kinds. But, for example, controlling access to a resource >is only useful, if you can utilise it or make money from that >resource - if you cannot do that for technical, political or >financial reasons, the resource isn't worth much to anybody. All >that is achieved, is that some are prevented from access by others. > >I would expect that in future, the wars will be more and more >oriented to issues about the *access to resources of any kind*, >calling into question the ownership relations, enclosures and >barriers pertaining to those resources. As I've argued before, I >think the globalisation of the world begets the "ghettoisation" of >the world, not necessarily spatially. "Criminality" is a relative >concept, insofar as what is not illegal, is not a crime, although it >may be morally objectionable, and obviously there are many more ways >to stir (or cause trouble) in the moral cauldron of humanity even >although those ways are not strictly illegal and bypass the law >makers. At issue there, is the self-regulation of people versus the >regulation by an external authority, ultimately the meaning of >freedom. The problem here is that markets by themselves cannot >balance this out. And indeed the modern social/cultural debate is >very much about human "behaviour" as such, the limits of what can be >tolerated, and how you can impose sanctions against behaviour deemed >anti-social. Grist to the mill for the genuine socialist concerned >with the potential for human emancipation from the conditions that >oppress them. > >Jurriaan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Jul 02 2007 - 00:00:03 EDT