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| (notes for this file:) Joseph replies to cRed-72 | ||||
Left-wing neo-conservatives (part one):
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Contents: TIP: Clicking on any of the paragraph numbers
--------- along the left margin
will take you back and forth
between the body of the article
and the table of contents.
paragraph
number chapters sections subheads
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11 The abandonment of communism
17 The magic of the marketplace
25 The marketplace and the environment
35 Ben and the marketplace
47 Anarchy of production
55 What replaces the invisible hand?
92 Ben pictures capitalist society
98 A crippling framework
103 Notes for part one
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| Ben, of the Revolutionary Socialist Study Group (RSSG) of Seattle, recently has released teasers trumpeting his writing on the "cooperative anarchy" of the future. [1] These articles from Ben show his view of eternal capi talism. Oh yes, he talks about anarchism and communism and classless society but he pictures the future as having such features of capitalism as separate enterprises in anarchic competition with one another. |
| Fred (RSSG) has a similar picture, but no longer calls it communism. As well, he praises today's imperialism as having overcome the reactionary fea tures of the past and become an era of "unprecedented economic growth and political and cultural transformation of regions" which has "transcended the old social contradictions and struggles of the past." [2] And we shall see that Fred's "socialist" theorizing amounts to projecting various features of to day's capitalism into the future. Meanwhile his co-thinker Jason in the RSSG doesn't talk about the future at all, but enthuses over the PLO-Israeli mini-state deal--why, IMF money and Israeli capital is supposed to be invested in the mini-state. [3] This is something of a concrete application of Fred's view of the new, improved imperialism. |
| From an eternal anarchy of production to imperialism transcending the class struggles of capitalism: the RSSG has been trapped by the neo- conservative mood of our time. The RSSG pride themselves on the "realism" with which they fight revolutionary illusions. But as we have seen before, and shall see again, their views are not based on today's reality. Today the increasing poverty and misery, the growing environmental dangers, and the never-ending national conflict present a somber picture of what the rule of the capitalist marketplace means for the majority of the people of this planet. |
| No, it's not reality that gives plausibility to the pictures of Ben and Fred and Jason. It is simply the pressure of triumphant neo- conservatism, which is imposing its views as the new "common sense" of our period. |
| For quite some time, the mainstream ideology of the American bourgeoisie was liberalism. Whatever the bourgeoisie did, no matter how many Vietnamese it napalmed, no matter how many black activists were murdered, no matter how many strikes were smashed, the main bourgeois ideologues trumpeted their liberalism. Today liberalism is the "L" word; even the liberals are rushing to em brace conservative themes; and the magic of the marketplace is the alpha and omega of bourgeois wisdom. |
| It's not just Newt Gingrich who expresses this conservatism, but liber als. It is not just liberals, but would-be radicals who can see no further than the tip of their noses. On the left, reformism has always capitulated to dominant bourgeois ideology. So it's not surprising that today it reflects neo-conservative thinking. |
| When the Marxist-Leninist Party died, it turned out that the majority on the CC had become disillusioned with revolutionary work and had doubts about socialism, revolutionary theory, the role of the working class, and anti-imperialism. [4] They had taken up features of what the MLP had previously denounced as "liquidationism"-- the abandonment of work to build a movement to express the revolutionary aspirations of the proletariat. Today this liquida tionism fits in with the neo-conservative mood. It includes: |
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| In this first part of my reply to Ben, I will highlight some features of this neo-conservatism as it comes up in the RSSG. In part two, I will outline Ben's method. In subsequent parts I will deal in more detail with some of the theoretical issues he raises. |
| The spread of neo-conservatism has gone so far that communism and so cialism are suspect in the eyes of many or most members of the RSSG. Ben himself briefly refers to this. He writes that "Neither Fred nor Jason seems to consider himself a communist at this point. This is fine with me. I don't consider them communists either." [6] |
| If they're not communists, what are they? Do they still see an alterna tive to capitalism and, if so, what? |
| Well, let's see how other members of the RSSG see Fred and Jason's views. Ben writes of "the prejudices of those younger and less experienced members of our study group who fail to see any problems at all in the views of Fred and Jason and who consider talk of going beyond capitalism to be `fantas tic' (`fantastic' not in the positive sense but in the sense of being outside the realm of matters which are possible to intelligently discuss)." (Ibid., the parenthetical remark is Ben's.) |
| Indeed Ben points out that "from now until the end of time `MONEY MAKES THE WORLD GO 'ROUND'" seems pretty reasonable to many RSSG members. But, he says, "Fred and Jason are at least in a formal sense agnostic (ie: uncon vinced) on this question..." [7] How reassuring. Fred and Jason aren't 100% convinced yet that money-economy (i.e. capitalism and the marketplace) is eternal. But they realize that this is where their theories are leading them. |
| A funny "revolutionary socialist study group", the RSSG is. In it we find "revolutionary socialists" who regard any talk of going beyond capitalism as stupid, idle chatter. They polemicize against class organizing. And they think money makes the world go round, now and forever. Maybe the RSSG should be called the neo-conservative coffee klatsch. |
| When did such ideas first get expressed? |
| As the MLP carried out a program to study Soviet history and see how and why the proletarian revolution got diverted into revisionist state capitalism, the concept of socialism was restudied. The Workers Advocate Supplement car ried material on Marx and Engels's conception of socialism, as well as criti cism of Soviet conceptions of the '30s and earlier. This was a time when the MLP looked at basic ideas about what is and what isn't socialism. |
| Given the overall atmosphere of the times, it seems that some comrades ended up accepting marketplace ideas as the only alternative to revisionist state capitalism. Fred ended up laying stress not on the class and ownership relationships in a society, but on its efficiency and "rationality". He al leged that the Soviet Union had implemented the Marxist views on eliminating capitalist ownership--and look at the mess that resulted. |
| This led him to scorn workplace leaflets because the task was to put forward a more efficient way to restructure industry. He began to sneer at phrases denouncing profiteering and instead concentrated on how industries could be more competitive in the world market and how value calculations could be more rational. [8] |
| Fred held that a better society would be run on the basis of a more accurate calculation of the value of the things it produced--value being the number of labor-hours that went into the production of them. It was wrong calculations that led to inefficiency and economic crisis. And, he hypothe sized, inadequate communications technology might be the key to the existence of class division. [9] |
| How times change. At one time Fred wrote that "value itself must be abolished", but now he believes that proper value calculations are the key to the future. [10] Yet the labor theory of value isn't a theory of the most efficient way to produce goods, but an explanation of how capitalism works, and how exploitation takes place. The prices of most (not all) commodities oscillate around their value, and Marxism analyzed what that value was under capitalism. Value explains how the marketplace operates under capitalism, not the best way in which to pro duce goods. [11] |
| I will go into more detail on this in later in this series. For now, it suffices to note that Fred's theory that value rules the world-- and will do so even more strictly and accurately in a future society-- means that, in essence, the economy would continue to be run by money and the marketplace. |
| As Fred developed his theories, he found that his framework led him back repeatedly to capitalist solutions. He wrote that "One thing that strikes me is the fact that the Western model has many features which seek economic rationality and therefore continue to advance society....This rationality is sought indirectly as a by-product of sectional profitability,..." [12] |
| Of course, Marxism has always analyzed the dynamism of capitalism com pared to past exploiting systems. It has pointed to the rapidity and global scale with which capitalism develops--and the rapidity and global scale with which it commits crimes and rapes the toilers and the environment. But the way Fred saw it, he had discovered a new world--the "rationality tendencies" in capitalism. He wrote off the crimes of capitalism as simply mysterious "de lays" in adopting "rational policies" and not an inherent part of capitalist rationality. In Fred's terminology, "rational" meant that various features of capitalism were not specific to this people-eating system, but were inherent in the very nature of production. So he sought to preserve the core of these rationality tendencies and purify them for the future. |
| What are these "rationality tendencies"? |
| One example is that "credit and speculation seeks planning of future changes in economic activity, such as research or pollution control. Exchange value calculation seeks to balance the relative benefits of expanding alloca tion to this or that product." |
| So here we have it. Credit and speculation are supposedly motors for pollution control. The correct calculation of exchange value, backed by the huge forces of financial speculation, will protect the environment. This is chapter and verse from the late Warren Brookes' neo-conservative columns in the Detroit News. Not that Fred read these columns of course--but his framework led him to the same idea. |
| And what a concept! What careful observation of reality! In a world where the marketplace, with its scale of operations multiplied manyfold by credit and speculation, is stripping Brazil, East Asia, New Zealand, etc. of forests! In a world where more and more untested chemicals are put into production each year! But don't worry. Just calculate exchange value correctly, and the envi ronment will be protected. |
| This was no passing fancy for Fred. He returned several times to this theme. |
| For example, consider his criticism of Frank's mini-pamphlet on Pacific Northwest timber that appeared in the last Workers' Advocate Supplement. Frank wrote that a socialist society would seek to protect the environment and that "Such decisions are not based on what yields the highest rate of profit,..." [13] Fred protested that all decisions had to be based on the highest rate of return, properly and rationally calculated. He wrote that "It is not accurate to counterpoise social and cultural demands of the people to overall economic efficiency,...A socialist society would want to utilize all its labor re sources,...to produce the maximum amount of social wealth. Conservation would not contradict this, since in the long run conservation would yield more useful wealth for humans than exhausting resources." [14] Such reasoning reminds one of the usual neo-conservative arguments that corporations, if properly led and free from do-gooder interference, will protect natural resources because it is more profitable to do so. |
| Fred also objected to Steve Peterson's polemic against the anti- people views of Earth First! concerning the "population bomb". Peterson connected environmental issues to the economic and social system. Fred fumed about Peterson's "talk about profits, capitalism, socialism, etc.". Why "without any ideas of how a socialist economy might organize differently, condemnation of profit-seeking is barren rhetoric." [15] It's now clear that Fred wanted a discussion of the digital infrastructure and better value calculations. Mere talk about social systems was just as old-hat to him as liberal catch words to Newt Gingrich. |
| Ben however claims to be a Marxist who has gone beyond the marketplace. He jumps up and down about how he has transcended money and the marketplace. Why, he proclaims that Marx is alive! Why, he is above Fred and Jason and their prejudiced followers! |
| But his differences with Fred and Jason are mainly cosmetic. When you look at the content of Ben's views, they are close to Fred's. In fact, he gives the same example of the marketplace and the environment. Unlike Fred, he doesn't talk about value. But does this mean he has departed from the market place ideology? Not at all! Instead he praises the market mechanism directly (without "formally" calling it the market mechanism). |
| He writes: |
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| So let's see. One product poisons Bangladesh but can be produced easily, and the other is safe, but uses up more "public wealth". Should the Banglade shis be poisoned? Let the consumers decide! If 50% of the consumers are con cerned about safety, then the Bangladeshis will only get 50% of the poison; if only 10% care, then 90% of the poison will do its ugly work. |
| Ben has simply put the marketplace in charge of poisoning. Note that he isn't talking of the people voting to decide whether to clean up their envi ronment. For him, that would be bureaucratic super-centralism. No, he is talking of the "proportion" of two products being decided by, for example, the choices of consumers as they ask for one or the other product. The marketplace will decide. This is a solution based on neo- conservative marketplace ideas. |
| Neo-conservatism blames all the ills of capitalism on "big government". They say the collapse of "communism" (referring to the state capitalist re gimes) proves that the unrestricted market must reign supreme. Environmental bans are among their targets. |
| And Ben ends up with a similar solution. He is at pains to find a way to protect the environment without administrative action of any sort. And he looks back to the marketplace. [17] |
| Even under capitalism, they don't always do things this way, although the neo-conservatives would like to. Various poisons are straight-out banned for domestic use (although American corporations may still manufacture them in Bangladesh as an exercise in the chauvinism of money-making--"we only care about the health of our own nationality"-- and of imperialist bullying of poor countries). |
| Take the poisoning of inner-city children by the lead in house paints. Even in the U.S., whether to use lead-based or lead-free paint isn't left up to the consumer or to the factory producing paint. Lead- based house paint is simply banned. (Oh, what horrible "Stalinist super- centralism", and right in the U.S.! Or, as the conservatives used to say when I was young, "creeping socialism".) Of course, the capitalists dragged their feet for decades on this issue, but eventually they banned such paint. |
| But in Ben's utopia, there would be a certain proportion of houses still getting fresh coats of lead-based paint unless absolutely everyone said "no". |
| In general, Ben envisages communist economy as consisting of independent economic units which are in competition with each other. He has no understand ing of how a planned economy can be anything but "Stalinist super-centralism". He can see central planning agencies only as busybody tyrants, directing absolutely everything, smashing local initiative, and preventing the trying out of different approaches or the discussion of differing ideas. He is afraid of any formal authority in a socialist country, or even of the administrative apparatus that remains in a communist country. |
| But how then for society to run production as a whole? And without that, there is no socialism. |
| Well, there is no way. Ben ends up taking the capitalist anarchy of production as the alternative to revisionist tyranny and bureaucracy. This too is typical neo-conservatism, which shouts that without the competitive drive for profits in the marketplace there will only be feudalism. |
| Ben conceives his system of independent competing "production units" as one of "cooperative anarchy". But he goes bonkers denying that this is the same thing as the anarchy of production. No, he says, he envisions anarchy, but it is "cooperative anarchy". He thinks you have changed something when you have renamed it. |
| When Ben first made this claim, Mark in reply pointed out that Ben was idealizing capitalism. Adam Smith claimed that the clash of private interests gives rise to public good through the "invisible hand" of market forces. Ben says that the anarchy of competing production units gives rise to "fantastic amounts of material and social wealth" by being "somehow...coordinated". But coordination that just "somehow" happens is nothing but another name for Adam Smith's "invisible hand". |
| Ben jumps up and down that he is not talking of the anarchy of production. Why "cooperative anarchy" is something else. All it has in common with the anarchy or production is the word "anarchy", says Ben. [18] What about the concept of anarchy, Ben? Doesn't the word refer to a concept? |
| Ben's "cooperative anarchy" refers to the relation between "production units" (factories, enterprises, etc.). What else is anarchy among production units than the anarchy of production? Isn't a red sweater the same as a sweat er that is red? |
| Yet Ben shouts that now he has caught Mark. He says that the brains of his critics are addled by Stalinism. Trumpets blare; fireworks are sent up; he writes Seattle 72 and 74 (a request to the CWV Theoretical Journal to print part of Seattle 72), and begins his victory party. |
| But wait a minute. If Ben's "cooperative anarchy" isn't the anarchy of production, then how does he see it giving rise to cooperation? He has ruled out planning in favor of anarchy. And he has also ruled out the unplanned result of competing forces, Adam Smith's "invisible hand". Very well, what takes the place of the "invisible hand"? |
| In Seattle #68, where Ben put forward "cooperative anarchy", he only told us that cooperation takes place "somehow". That's not much to go on in building socialist society. Until he explains it a bit better, he is dancing to the tune of his own mindlessness. |
| Well, it takes Ben until paragraph 98 before he feels safe to get around to this key point. He finally asks, with respect to his "cooperative anarchy", the 64-million-dollar question: "What might assist production units in a communist economy to coordinate their activity into a harmonious whole?" |
| Finally, the key question. Is Ben relying on Adam Smith's "invisible hand", or not? |
| So what's the answer? |
| Ben has no answer. |
| In paragraph 98, Ben raises the question only to evade it. Instead of answering the question, he gives a one-sided description of capitalist crisis. Well, Ben, we're waiting. |
| In paragraph 99 Ben gives his view of how revisionist economy works. He carefully avoids any mention of the question of class domination and ownership in society and attributes the problems of state capitalism solely to bad planning. [19] So what's the alternative to revisionist tyranny? He simply con trasts the bad revisionist economy to "`free-market' capitalism" and "market place mechanisms". |
| That's clear, isn't it? The one clear, concrete answer Ben can give is the marketplace. But as to anything else, we're still waiting. |
| In paragraph 100 he tells us the masses will decide. But he doesn't tell us how. |
| No, wait, he does have one suggestion! In some particular industries at some particular times, there will be "central planning bodies". |
| Thus his only concrete example in this paragraph is "central planning bodies", which he otherwise regards as Stalinist super- centralism, repressive, incompatible with mass initiative, typified by the miserable Soviet bureau cratic tyranny, and worthy only of "religious sectarians" like Mark and me. He was supposed to be describing how his cooperative anarchy is superior to central planning, and so far his only anarchist-utopian alternative is--cen tral planning, but not for the whole economy. |
| Let's look at this further. Either these central planning bodies are compatible with mass initiative and promote it (and even require mass initia tive as the precondition for successful work), or they aren't. If they are compatible with and promote mass initiative, then why not have them for the economy as a whole? If they are enemies of mass initiative, then where does Ben think he will find large numbers of liberated, free worker-intellectuals of the future who will consent to slave away in the repressive, Stalinist industries, while watching all the other worker-intellectuals living a free and happy life in the section of the economy under "cooperative anarchy"? |
| In any case, we're still waiting for Ben to describe any method of coordination other than either Adam Smith's "invisible hand" or some form of planning. |
| In paragraph 101 Ben tells us "There are other ways of involving the masses in the economic life of society." |
| Well, finally. Let's look at them. |
| He lists several ways: |
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| Suppose all these different ways of making economic decisions clash. |
| Suppose public opinion wants a factory to be run one way, but the workers at that factory insist on another way? What happens? Ben is silent. |
| Suppose workers at two different factories disagree. Who decides then? Ben is silent. |
| And isn't saying that the "consumers" decide another way of referring to market forces? Remember Ben's example of how to decide whether Bangladeshis are to be poisoned by a bad product? |
| Or again, if there is no body with formal authority, exactly how does the public opinion manifest itself? It isn't sufficient for a lot of people to simply think the same thought in unison. But Ben is silent here too. |
| So here too Ben has evaded the question. |
| Paragraph 102 simply elaborates this point again with examples, verify ing what we have said about Ben's views. This is where Ben describes how the marketplace will decide how to deal with a product whose production poisons Bangladeshis: how many Bangladeshis die will depend on how many consumers buy the poisonous product. Heaven forbid that a communist society might actually ban a product that poisons Bangladeshis, or that the Bangladeshis might ban it themselves. This would be taking away the freedom of consumers to have their pound of Bangladeshi flesh. It would be super-centralism, bureaucracy, and every other violation of the anarchist-technocratic utopia. What's a few hundred thousand poisoned Bangladeshis in exchange for the freedom of the marketplace? |
| But onwards. |
| Paragraph 103 says that "there might be different and opposing" economic planning bodies. You see, Ben isn't opposed to central planning, so long as there are a multitude of conflicting plans in operation at the same time. |
| But who decides when the planning bodies disagree? Ben is silent. |
| Or then again, Ben says, there might only be a single agency, but it would be in a constant state of civil war between "opposing or competing political, economic or cultural philosophies". As well, he says, "competing material interests" might operate in the agency, even in the early stages of a communist society. Well, once again, how do decisions get taken? Which side predominates at any time? [20] |
| And why does a repressive, Stalinist agency become effi cient and socialist just because it has internal conflict? |
| In paragraph 104 Ben tries another approach--an even bigger dose of charlatanism. He goes in for a lot of big fancy phrases, hoping people will think "he must be profound, because we can't understand any of this." But actually he is whistling in the dark. |
| For example, he assures one and all that his idea of coordination makes "the action of the marketplace under capitalism" look "infinitely crude", and Ben puts it in BOLDFACE. Wouldn't it be better if he simply told us how this coordination was to be achieved and let us judge for ourselves how infinitely wonderful it is? |
| But no. That's not Ben's way. Instead he goes on to make grand pro nouncements: Why, he says, "economic, political and cultural struggles would be utterly and completely merged and indistinguishable from one another." Or at least, Ben's ideas about them would be utterly and completely merged and indistinguishable from utter nonsense. |
| And finally, in paragraph 105, Ben comes up with yet another answer. This is his last, his final answer. Coordination will be accomplished through "consciousness". It seems that you don't need institutions to express this consciousness. You're not allowed to ask how the consciousness expresses itself. Just trust in "consciousness". Apparently this is a spiritual touch--the great universal consciousness will come down and reveal itself through its prophet Ben. And just as believers think the Church is higher and purer than the world of mere material concerns, so Ben assures us that "consciousness would also be the primary, the highest and the ultimate form of wealth." (Ben's emphasis) |
| Moving on, there is paragraph 106. (Sorry, Ben never has a final answer. The fast talk just goes on and on.) This time he tells us that it is all in his article "On the Transition to a Communist Economy". However, he won't show us this article. We can imagine why. |
| Insofar as Ben's picture of "cooperative anarchy" describes anything, they are purified and glorified pictures of today's capitalist society. |
| Ben describes "central planning agencies" that only plan particular industries, while the overall economy remains unplanned. That's just modern monopoly capitalism, where the giant multinational corporations plan vast empires, but the overall result is determined by the marketplace. |
| Ben also describes a society where consumers, employees, public opinion, and mass organizations have some input on economic decisions, but don't have "formal authority". That's an idealization of what happens in any modern developed country. There are a lot of organizations and sectors with some input, "formal authority" for most is restricted, and the dollar rules. Of course, under capitalism, sometimes mass organizations do have a bit of formal authority--for example, unions can negotiate binding contracts. |
| Or again, Ben describes central planning agencies split into competing interests. Here Ben has inadvertently described the state planning boards of revisionist countries. Far from the revisionist countries running their economy as one smoothly running machine, the revisionist economies were split into rival interests. This didn't give rise to dynamism and progress but to the various absurdities and stagnation of revisionist economy. We mentioned this briefly above. |
| Ben just can't get beyond capitalist ideas. His believes that coopera tion will arise through the conflict of independent producers. He is simply paraphrasing Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations. When Ben wrote that Marx isn't dead, he apparently meant to say that Adam Smith isn't dead. Didn't Marx think highly of the classical authors of bourgeois political economy including Adam Smith? Now there's a part of Marxism that Ben can identify with. |
| We will return to these questions later on in this series. This will take us into the study of some Marxist economics including such questions as the meaning of value, and the relations of large-scale production to freedom, and of diversity to planning. |
| For now, however, let's consider how neo-conservatism enters the RSSG. Fred and Ben and the RSSG are not capitalists or even accountants. Fred and Jason, who praise imperialism, are not executives or stockholders but part of the working intelligentsia. Ben, who tends more to a Jeffersonian-democratic view of small-scale independent ("parallel") enterprises competing with each other, is not a small businessperson. But the collapse of revisionist state capitalism and the growth of the world economy means, in their eyes, that there is no alternative to the basic mechanisms of capitalism and bourgeois democracy. |
| Marx pointed out the activists of the petty-bourgeois democratic trend in mid-19th century France were also not simply motivated by self- interest. He pointed out that their demands against the monarchists which had been ruling France, no matter in what revolutionary phrases they were formulated, were for "a transformation within the bounds of the petty bourgeoisie." But why could they see no further than a purified marketplace of small proprietors, which they hoped to rid of class struggle, rather than take the stand of organizing the class struggle? Marx explained, presumably talking about the best of these representatives of the petty-bourgeois, that: "...one must not form the nar row-minded notion that the petty bourgeoisie, on principle, wishes to enforce an egoistic class interest. Rather, it believes that the special conditions of its emancipation are the general conditions within the frame of which alone modern society can be saved and the class struggle avoided. Just as little must one imagine that the democratic representatives are indeed all shopkeep ers or enthusiastic champions of shopkeepers. According to their education and their individual position they may be as far apart as heaven from earth. What makes them representatives of the petty bourgeoisie is the fact that in their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the latter do not get beyond in life, that they are consequently driven, theoretically, to the same problems and solutions to which material interest and social position drive the latter practically." (underlining added) [21] |
| Our "socialist" neo-conservatives thinkers do not wish to serve the capitalists, and some of them even mouth phrases about the class struggle (although Fred has gone way beyond that and Jason polemicizes against the call for revolutionary class organizing). But they have lost faith in any alterna tive to the marketplace and bourgeois politics. In their minds they do not get beyond the limits which the corporations and bourgeois democracy have in practice. Their viewpoint is that of the reformist petty-bourgeoisie, dazzled by capitalist growth but complaining of the crises and struggles that "some how" just keep erupting. And so whether they are being "realistic" in drawing up plans for the development of Palestine (Jason), or letting their fancy soar in dreams of the future information era (Ben), they simply embellish the current neo-conservative "common sense" of capitalism. [] |
| [1] Ben put forward a vision of the future as "cooperative anarchy" in "Ask Comrade Science" (Seattle #68, December 11, 1994). He wrote that the dictatorship of the proletariat will be "nothing but the most marvelously efficient cooperative anarchy in which the actions of many independent, conflicting and parallel processes will somehow be coordinated to create fantastic amounts of material and social wealth without the necessity for any clumsy, burdensome and inefficient bureaucracy." |
| Mark replied, challenging Ben to release his articles on the subject and adding that "...Let's see, a society of independent producers who, despite conflicting with one another, `somehow' produce a heaven on earth. Ben's `cooperative anarchy' is just another way of describing capitalism, another way of praising the `invisible hand' which unites the independent, conflicting entities. Socialism must overcome anarchy of production, it must overcome independent processes that are somehow coordinated. Ben is right to be upset about the bureaucracy that developed in the former Soviet Union. But opposing bureaucracy without opposing anarchy of production is fitting for the Chamber of Commerce, not a socialist. And no matter what Ben imagines, his anarchy will, like in all other capitalist societies, give rise to a repressive bureaucracy--no matter how many computers exist in that society!" (Detroit #69, "Ben loses his nerve", Detroit 17, 1994. |
| Ben replied in Seattle #72 with page after page of abuse against Mark. He also went into pages of praise of "cooperative anarchy" which, however, neglected to mention one little thing--how cooperation and efficiency emerges from the anarchy of independent production units. ("How Mark Uses Stalin's Theory to Attempt to extinguish the Living Flame of Marxism (and gets burned for his efforts)", December 24, 1994, Seattle #72) Either there is a planned economy, or there isn't. But Ben wants it both ways. It's anarchy, but it's cooperative. |
| Ben then wrote to the editors of the CWV Theoretical Journal, claiming that Mark had made "a blunder the magnitude of which is difficult to overestimate." (Seattle #74, December 26, 1994) |
| [2] Fred's view of the dynamic new imperialism can be found in his article "What can be learned from the bloodbath regarding approaches to investigation" (Seattle #41). I comment in my article "Censorship, imperialism and revisionism" (Detroit #28). Both articles are in the Chicago Workers' Voice Theoretical Journal #2, March 30, 1994. |
| Fred returned to the subject in part 3 of his "bloodbath" article. In the first endnote he eulogizes imperialism, denies that it is still in the "basic capitalist framework", and says it has transcended the old social contradictions. See the CWV Theoretical Journal #4, Sept. 1, 1994. I commented on his denial of class struggle and revolution in "Plebeian class consciousness and socialist revolution " in Detroit #31 in the same issue of the CWVTJ. |
| [3] See the debate on Palestine carried in the CWV Theoretical Journal #3, June 1, 1994 and #5, Dec. 1, 1994. Jason and Mark's latest replies (Seattle #75 and Detroit #72) will probably be in Issue #6. |
| [4] However, the emerging CC majority never had a majority on the the National Executive Committee and Workers' Advocate group, which directed the MLP's national publications. This makes it hard to see the evolution of the CC majority in the pages of the Workers' Advocate. It was edited in a different spirit from the emerging neo-conservatism, and were gradually strangled rather than being taken over. This accounts for the bitterness, in the debate prior to the congress dissolving the MLP, with which Michael, a member of the CC majority, spoke of how horrible work on the Workers' Advocate was for him. |
| [5] Ben's Stalin-baiting is, in part, intended to hide the fact that he and the RSSG have abandoned anti-revisionism. They don't talk of Stalinist revisionism, but just of the individual Stalin. The late Marxist-Leninist Party tirelessly fought Soviet revisionism, and dealt with Stalin from that standpoint. By way of contrast, the RSSG, in its only leaflet, did not denounce either "revisionism" or "Stalinism" or "Stalin". In fact, Fred--who edited that leaflet--holds that Stalinist-style society was "progressive", despite being oppressive.(See Fred' "Errors in `the bloodbath, part I'", Seattle #46, CWVTJ #3. I commented on Fred's views in "Is revisionism progressive?", Detroit #32, March 24, 1994, which is not in the CWVTJ.) |
| But Ben and the RSSG wave a bloody portrait of Stalin to scare people off from thinking. Ben denounces any opposition to his ideas as "Stalin's thinking". There is no evidence; it's just neo-conservative red-baiting. |
| Wait, here's the evidence. In "How Mark Uses Stalin's Theory..." Ben complains that the MLP allegedly had "Stalin's super-centralized party architecture" (paragraph 65). The proof--Ray's letter of September 1988 was "kept hidden from the party base" and thereby "rendered powerless to save the party". A single letter--that's the proof. That's absurd. |
| But let's take a look: actually it was Ray (now of the RSSG) who didn't circulate his letter widely. Even Ben admits that Ray told him this. (Seattle #22) And Ben holds that such documents can't be circulated without the author's permission, even if the author has previously released the document to various party units. On this basis, in the last period Ben has helped suppress the circulation of a number of documents. |
| Back to Ray. In 1991 Ray further developed his ideas in a proposal to drop the the hammer and sickle from party literature. The Seattle Branch of the MLP even implemented this proposal on its own. When the Central Committee disagreed with this proposal, Ray said there was no need to circulate his document. Why, the Seattle Branch would restore the hammer and sickle to its leaflets. I on the contrary insisted that the whole party should discuss the matter, and that it shouldn't be brushed under the rug. And I wrote in the MLP's Information Bulletin, kicking off a discussion on this. |
| And guess what? Ben denounces me as a Stalinist for this. He has spent page after page denouncing me for bringing issues to the whole party. He calls it such names as "incitement"--i.e. the party members often disagreed with Ray or Fred of the RSSG. As I showed in my article "Censorship, Imperialism and Revisionism" (Detroit #28, CWVTJ #2), Ben doesn't really care about the right to circulate documents, which he regards as merely "formal". He is way beyond such alleged mere formality. His real definition of Stalinism is that I and others don't agree with him. |
| As to the MLP's "party architecture", the MLP both in theory and practice put great stress on the local initiative of its branches and the consciousness of its members. Ben however is unable to comprehend how an organization could have both local initiative and centralism. |
| [6] "How Mark Uses Stalin's Theory...", Seattle #75, paragraph 24. It is notable that Ben--the supposed high-minded supporter of truth, information, and the computerized way of life--holds that information must be judged on whether it is useful for one's political purposes, not whether it is true. |
| For example, in paragraph 30 Ben admits that Fred and Jason are "clearly wrong" on a number of points on which they have been criticized by Mark and me. But this is supposedly irrelevant, because Mark and me are bad guys. He devotes 18 of his numbered paragraphs to explaining that he won't spell out his criticisms of Fred and Jason--after all, criticizing Fred and Jason might help the bad guys. So are Fred and Jason social-democrats? Ben says that yes, they sort of are--but we shouldn't say so, because this would help the bad guys. It's OK Ben, you can say they are social-democrats, because I actually have a different characterization of them. |
| [7] Seattle #72, paragraph 96, the capitalization is Ben's. Fred and Jason aren't sure, Ben says, "in a formal sense". This presumably means that if you ask Fred or Jason in precisely those words, they'll say they're not sure. But if you consider the content of Fred's views, one sees that it implies the eternal existence of money. Indeed, earlier, in Seattle #60, Ben says that it is Fred he is opposing on the issue of "will money make the world go 'round til the end of time". |
| [8] See Frank's article "For Proletarian Socialist Revolution" in the CWV Theoretical Journal #3, June 1, 1994. This fine article goes into Fred's replacement of class struggle and revolutionary agitation with a program of structural reform. It dwells at some length on the preparation of a leaflet on the Northwest timber industry, thus dealing with environmental issues as well as the exploitation of the workforce. Fred had edited Frank's mini-pamphlet on timber in order to produce the RSSG's only leaflet. It turned out that Fred was upset about the denunciation of profiteering and profit-seeking. He wrote a letter to Frank in which he stated that "One could assume that the alternative to profits and competition is losses and monopoly, and there is a strong logic in the experience of state capitalism to back this up." |
| Frank soon left the RSSG for political reasons. The former MLP circles in Seattle split into two groups. |
| [9] In a letter to me of April 25, 1993, Fred hypothesized about what caused the development of Soviet bureaucracy. He put the finger on communications technology. "It may be the case that a socialist economy is simply impossible without a digital infrastructure." |
| I replied later that year to Fred. Later in this series I will publish the complete text of this exchange. |
| [10] Fred's formulation appears in his article "Rough thoughts on Pete's notes on the speech, `The Technical and cultural basis for workers' socialism in the modern world'" (the Workers Advocate Supplement, Feb. 20, 1992, vol. 8, #2). I criticized it in "Some notes on theory" (Supplement, May 20, 1992, Vol. 8, #5). Value isn't abolished, but "whether it is a real and meaningful concept depends on whether the system is still capitalist, or has communist ownership by society as a whole." Value can neither be abolished by government decree, nor resuscitated by 100,000 economists laboring "to assign a numerical rating to every useful article in sight." |
| [11] Indeed, as capitalism develops, prices oscillate not around the labor-value of a commodity, but around a related but different measure. A certain correction is made to the labor-value -- although this correction averages to zero when taken over the whole economy. This is explained in Volume III of Marx's Capital. This by itself strongly suggests that value is not the "rational" measure of a product, but the description of a social relationship that exists only at a certain point in human history. |
| [12] This is again from Fred's letter of April 25, 1993 to me, as are the next few quotes from Fred. |
| Fred also said that the Western model "has contradictory tendencies too" and not just rationality tendencies. But he saw these backward tendencies mainly as resistance to proper calculations. He wrote "somehow there appear to be delays in adjustment to rational policies, resistance to adjustment, and adjustment through crisis which interrupts economic development." He overlooks that capitalist growth and capitalist crisis are two sides of the same process of capitalist rationality. No, the bad things just "somehow" appear. |
| [13] The Workers Advocate Supplement, Aug.10, 1993, p. 31, col. 2. See the lead article "Capitalist profiteering and capitalist competition are at the root of layoffs in the Northwest timber industry: Save all the old-growth! Make the government and industry fairly compensate unemployed timber workers!" |
| [14] See the discussion of this in the section "Fred on political economy" in my article "Some miscellaneous points", Detroit #14, Nov. 18, 1993. |
| Note that Fred himself admitted that "We might not be able to measure this wealth [environmental values--Jph.] in the same terms as the immediate use of resources, but that is another issue." (Seattle #20, point c) This admits that there are two separate measures. So Frank was right to say that the protection of the environment could not be based on preserving the highest rate of return. Yet Fred, having conceded that his demand to calculate environmental values in the same way as other "useful wealth" is impossible, insists on it anyway. This is an example of how neo-conservatism is not based on reality, but is imposed against reality. |
| [15] Peterson's spirited exchange with Don Smith of Earth First! can be found in the December 20, 1992 issue of the Workers Advocate Supplement (vol. 8, #7). Fred's objection is in the WAS of 20 May 1993 (vol.9, #3). I replied to Fred in the article "Population, technology and environmental devastation" in the WAS for July 1, 1993 (vol. 9, #4); and Peterson replied to Fred in "Population bomb: still a dud" in the last WAS, Aug. 10, 1993 (vol. 9, #5). |
| [16] "How Mark Uses Stalin's Theory...", Seattle #72, paragraph 102, Ben's emphasis. |
| [17] Another capitalist solution is to put a dollar figure on the environment or on human life, and then decide what is most profitable. Some U.S. regulatory agencies have an official value for a human life. This is essentially Fred's solution of readjusting value calculations. |
| [18] Seattle #72, paragraph 86. |
| [19] In my article "Some notes on theory (2)" in the Workers Advocate Supplement of July 25, 1992, I put forward a more realistic picture of the Soviet state capitalist economy. Ben gets his idea of Soviet economy from the "common sense" of the West--i.e. from the stuff of hack anti-communist editorials. Thus he ignores the role of the class interests and competing individual interests of the bureaucratic ruling class. |
| [20] Note that Ben assumes that politics will exist forever. He doesn't have a hint of what Engels meant when he pointed out that economic decisions, in a classless society, would lose their political character and become the mere administration of things, not people. |
| [21] See The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, midway through section 3. [] |