khukuri Rotating Header Image

The crisis, 3 years and counting

Sep 1st, 2010
by John Steele.
No comments yet

Three years of the deepest economic crisis since the 1930s, and no end in sight. The following piece gives a sketch of where things are at. Eddy Laing is the author of the three-part Costs of Empire (to be found here, here, and here on this site), as well as the essay Why Historical Materialism Matters.

The economic crisis is forcing a reshaping of political superstructural elements in every capitalist country….

The crisis raises deep questions about the nature of capitalism for those who would like to find a way beyond this madness as well. The global parasitism of financial capital has been revealed in many of its interlinked parts…. Most importantly, global capitalism has severely weakened itself economically and politically through the course of this economic crisis, presenting opportunities for it to be deliberately weakened much further from without, both politically and ideologically. But its current condition is only the starting point for the more profound, active and deliberate social critique that is required.

Great Recession, Age 3

by Eddy Laing
8/30/2010

“There are many contradictions in the process of development of a complex thing, and one of them is necessarily the principal contradiction whose existence and development determines or influences the existence and development of the other contradictions.” – Mao Tsetung, On Contradiction

September 2010 marks the second anniversary of the grand collapse of the global debt markets on which so much of the world imperialist system has depended for the last 35 years. This fourth quarter will also mark the third anniversary of the onset of the ‘technical’ recession of which the banking collapse is a major part. Three years later, despite all their best efforts to manipulate debt markets and monetary ‘tools,’ the world capitalist economy remains the metaphorical overturned cart in the ditch, horses splayed on the ground beside it, legs broken and twitching. Even their champion horse whisperer Ben Bernanke says it will remain as it is for several years.

Those financial circuits were and remain key segments of speculative money capital from which the ‘shining city on the hill’ derived its glow and was able to lord it over the rest of the world. The power for those circuits has always been the labor of billions of real people, throughout the colonial and neo-colonial world.

In the imperial homelands, for many people the old price of security meant averting your eyes from everything being done by imperialism in the Third World, keeping your shoulder to the wheel, staying in line, and making a deal with the devil in the form of a mortgage and personal debts so that you could pretend to live a ‘good life.’ The current recession, the most recent and most severe economic crisis in many decades, has brought that charade to an abrupt end and posed exceptionally serious questions for those who just a few years ago led rather different economic lives under this system.

This essay examines the reality of the recession three years later and presents evidence that it is ongoing, deepening, and that the measures taken by the ruling classes have only exacerbated their problems. This recession is effecting the political superstructures of many of those societies and effecting the ideological frames with which individuals and groups in them are interpreting and interacting with current socio-economic situations. In sum, this essay suggests how the current economic recession emerged as the overarching contradiction that is influencing the development of the other social contradictions currently inherent in most capitalist societies.

Continue reading →

Posted in: Eddy Laing, Political Economy.

The discovery of Marx’s Grundrisse

Aug 28th, 2010
by John Steele.
No comments yet

Marx’s Grundrisse (Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie, or Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy)  is a large work, comprising notebooks or drafts of material, written in 1857-58 in the midst of his extensive (and intense) economic studies, as he was thinking of methods of approach and presentation. As the following piece recounts, the discovery, publication and recognition of the importance of this earlier approach to the questions of Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859) and Capital (1867) was a long process. I can well remember the excitement surrounding its publication in English for the first time, in 1973.

This work and its history is of more than historical interest as we strive to understand the current deep crisis of capitalism, precisely because it does indicate different approaches than Capital and serves to demonstrate the breadth and complex flexibility of Marx’s thinking, as well as containing a number of remarks that many have found very suggestive and fertile, such as those on “general intellect.”

The following article is an abridged version of a chapter from Karl Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the critique of political economy 150 years later, edited by Marcello Musto. It is reprinted here from Links. Marcello Musto teaches at the Department of Political Science at York University, Toronto Canada.

The dissemination and reception of the `Grundrisse’ — a contribution to the history of Marxism

By Marcello Musto

I.  1858-1953: One hundred years of solitude

Having abandoned the Grundrisse in May 1858 to make room for work on the A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, Karl Marx used parts of it in composing this latter text but then almost never drew on it again. In fact, although it was his habit to invoke his own previous studies, even to transcribe whole passages from them, none of the preparatory manuscripts for Capital, with the exception of those of 1861-3, contains any reference to the Grundrisse. It lay among all the other drafts that he had no intention of bringing into service as he became absorbed in solving more specific problems than they had addressed.

Continue reading →

Posted in: History, Marxism.

What could the end of capitalism look like?

Aug 22nd, 2010
by John Steele.
1 comment

We’ve had some interesting and important discussions on this site (see, recently, the comments on the Henwood piece and on the interview with Albo, Gindin, and Panitch) which have sometimes referenced fictitious capital and have often come back to three very large questions: the character and cause of the neoliberal period of the past 30 years; the nature and explanation of the present crisis; and what may lie ahead. Can we overstate the cruciality of these questions? In the following post Loren Goldner addresses all of them.

Thanks to Nick Patetsky, who has recommended or referred to Goldner’s writings several times. This essay, originally written five years ago,  is reprinted from Break Their Haughty Power (and what a dynamite name that is!).

Fictitious Capital and the Transition Out of Capitalism

By Loren Goldner

The following is a “thought experiment” which attempts to see fictitious capital in relation to the end of capitalism. By pursuing the concept of fictitious capital as far as we can,  by illuminating the unbelievable distortions it has fomented in what is called “economic development” on a world scale, we can highlight the nature of contemporary struggles as well as explain why there are not more struggles. We can also address the reasons why a  “society beyond capitalism” seems such a remote possibility at present.

In discussing fictitious capital, we must never forget that it is subordinate to, and derivative from, capital generally. It is important not to foment the illusion that the struggle is against “fictitious capital”, leaving “real” capital itself unexamined. But at the same time, it is indispensable to sort out the fictitious dimension of the contemporary economy, if only conceptually. Many people today, including people on the radical left, regard contemporary capitalism as functioning normally, more or less the way it always has. I could not disagree more. Perhaps, as contemporary ideologies assert, capitalism has “reinvented” or is “reinventing” itself,  as it has done several times in the past.  Be that as it may, the post-1973 period presents one of the strangest, if not the strangest phases in the history of capitalism.

What, then, is fictitious capital?

Continue reading →

Posted in: History, Loren Goldner, Marxism, Political Economy, Revolutionary Strategy.

Marxism, politics, and evil, part 3

Aug 19th, 2010
by John Steele.
1 comment

This is the final portion of an examination of some principal themes in Bill Martin’s book, Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation. The first two parts of this essay have been published over the past two days and can be found below.

Marxism, Politics, and Evil:  A Critical Engagement with “Ethical Marxism”

John Steele

III

In this final section I want to work through a number of topics, including the adequacy of Martin’s take on Marx’s thought, and some characteristic moves and modes of thinking in Ethical Marxism. I will be critical here, because I think these are matters that are important to get right.

Continue reading →

Posted in: Bill Martin, John Steele, Marxism, Philosophy, Revolutionary Strategy.

Marxism, politics, and evil, part 2

Aug 18th, 2010
by John Steele.
1 comment

This is the second part of an essay on the book Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation, in which Bill Martin argues that Marxism requires morality in order to guide a revolutionary politics.  Part I, which was posted yesterday, was principally concerned with exposition. Today’s post takes up the principal line of argument of the book.

Marxism, Politics, and Evil:  A Critical Engagement with “Ethical Marxism”

John Steele

II

In some sense Ethical Marxism is a long meditation on the crying need for liberation from the brutalities and morass of today’s world, but also the need to surpass Marxism-as-it-has-been. Indeed, Martin’s point is that these needs are crucially interrelated and that fulfillment of the former depends upon accomplishment of the latter. I think this is true and important – in fact I could not agree more. But when we come to the question of how we are to surpass the now-dead Marxism of our fathers, we have some differences. Most basically, I do not believe that the most essential thing, in order for Marxism to become an emancipatory theoretical structure, is that it be reoriented around “the ethical moment” as its basis. I believe that an ethics is founded upon the revolutionary project, rather than founding it, as Martin argues. Rather than morality being the core or foundation of a truly revolutionary politics, as Martin argues, I believe that the political is more basic, and that ethics finds its foundation within larger human projects, including that of an emancipatory politics. Obviously this is a basic point, and thrashing it out (or at least indicating a direction of argument) is one basic aim of the remainder of this paper.

Continue reading →

Posted in: Bill Martin, John Steele, Marxism, Philosophy, Revolutionary Strategy.

Marxism, Politics, and Evil, part 1

Aug 17th, 2010
by John Steele.
1 comment

Is Marxism, or revolutionary politics generally, sufficient for human emancipation? In Ethical Marxism, Bill Martin argues that Marxism requires ethics as the necessary foundation of any politics which may actually be capable of leading to this goal. Following is the first part of an essay critically examining this book and this thesis. The entire piece will appear in three parts,  over the next few days.

Khukuri features several essays by Bill Martin, and he is a participant in the Kasama Project, with which both this site and Kasama are associated. He is the author of a number of books, including Matrix and Line: Derrida and the Possibilities of Postmodern Social Theory, The Radical Project: Sartrean Investigations, Listening to the Future: The Time of Progressive Rack, 1968-1978, and (with Bob Avakian) Marxism and the Call of the Future: Conversations on Ethics, History, and Politics, as well as others.

This is the second engagement with Ethical Marxism to appear on this site. The first, by Vern Gray can be found here.

Marxism, Politics, and Evil:  A Critical Engagement with “Ethical Marxism”

John Steele

In this essay I’ll be attempting to come to grips with Ethical Marxism: The Categorical Imperative of Liberation, a major effort by Bill Martin to map out the sort of theory he believes to be necessary in the 21st century for revolution and human liberation. I’ll first try to lay out Martin’s principal claims and lines of thought, followed by some questions and critique.

This is a large book which brings a number of themes, subjects and questions into play. I will only be dealing with the essential line of argument and thought, concerning Marxism, politics and ethics. Specifically, I will not be able to enter into some concrete questions which Martin casts as ethical and to which he devotes a large proportion of space in the book: imperialism, animals and the human consumption of meat, and the question of place. These are major parts of the book, not only in bulk but conceptually too, as attempts to both configure political questions ethically (imperialism) and to situate ethical questions (meat-eating) within a Marxist context. But although this study does examine some of the forms of argument which emerge in these areas, I have not been able to consider the substance of these questions, as they are framed in Ethical Marxism.

As will become clear, I think the theory sketched in Ethical Marxism is seriously flawed, and I will often be sharply critical. But I want to salute at the outset Martin’s attempt at the great and necessary task undertaken here, the refiguration of Marxism in the light of past impasses and present needs. I hope I’ll succeed in making clear the ways and extent to which I believe that the questions and problems which Martin is attempting to solve by means of this approach are very real and unresolved problems for all revolutionaries in this era.

Continue reading →

Posted in: Bill Martin, John Steele, Marxism, Philosophy, Revolutionary Strategy.

Marx and subjectivity

Aug 15th, 2010
by John Steele.
No comments yet

I found this review while browsing Nate’s always-interesting blog What in the hell… and asked him if we could repost here. (It’s been slightly revised for the khukuri posting.) The book, and review, deal with the question of understanding the relations of production within capitalism, and particularly the role of subjectivity (and its production) therein — a crucial question in thinking about and attempting to construct a revolutionary strategy for the present era.

The political issue is not what is new or old, but rather to always search for new weapons.

Micro-Politics of Capital: A Review

by Nate Hawthorne

Jason Read, The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and the Prehistory of the Present (State University of New York Press, 2003)

Jason Read’s book admirably covers a wide range of thinkers in The Micro-Politics of Capital. He engages structural Marxists like including Althusser; former Althusserians like Balibar and Ranciere; autonomist Marxists like Negri, Tronti, and Virno; and post-structuralists like Foucault and Deleuze. Given the range of thinkers Read deals with, it is no surprise that there are tensions running through the book, in a fashion similar to what Read calls “the tension between different logics in Marx’s writing.” [Read, 16]. This review first provides an overview of the book then turns to one of the book’s central tensions, with regard to time and historical epochs.

Marx once noted that production requires a prior distribution of productive relations [Grundrisse, 96].  Read identifies this distribution as simultaneously the production and product of subjectivity.

Continue reading →

Posted in: Book Review, Nate Hawthorne.

Financialisation, empire, crisis: how to get out?

Aug 13th, 2010
by John Steele.
2 comments

The following interview is with the three authors of In and Out of Crisis: The Global Financial Meltdown and Left Alternatives, a recently published short book on the economic crisis by Greg Albo, Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch. The book has its virtues and its vices, almost evenly divided between its analysis and its prescription. The analysis is interesting and valuable, while the “what to do” part (concentrated in chapters 6 and 7) concentrates on restoring the capacities of organized labor, developing a socialist approach to the environment, and some other wishes (making the banking system a public utility, limiting work time, building left unity through establishing ‘an independent infrastructure of socialist media”). More or less the same sort of division is evident in this interview. I believe their analysis (developed in a number of writings by Panitch and the group of writers and researchers associated with him) is vitally important.  This interview contains a decent taste of their results and conclusions, and readers can judge for themselves.

All three authors teach political economy at York University in Toronto. Panitch and Albo are co-editors of the Socialist Register; Gindin was research director of the Canadian Auto Workers Union for many years. Sasha Lilley is author of the forthcoming Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult.

This interview was originally published in The Bullet.

An Interview with Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin, and Greg Albo

by Sasha Lilley

Lilley: Liberals and leftists alike argue that the economic crisis was caused by a lack of state regulation over the banks and financial markets. Consequently, they conclude that we just need new regulation to keep the financial sector in line. Why don’t you think that’s the case?

Leo Panitch: Well, the cause of the crisis was certainly related to competition in the financial sector. But that competition was to some extent the product of state regulation. The American financial system is certainly the most regulated financial system in the world, and probably in history, if you measure it in terms of the number of pieces of legislation, the number of regulatory agencies, and the massive amounts of regulation to which finance is subject.

So, yes, there were changes that allowed for more competition in finance, although those changes were only a matter of closing the barn door after the horse had bolted. It was already the development of finance that made the old New Deal regulations impossible. The state then removed those limits and encouraged further competition in finance. So it’s just a misunderstanding of what’s really going on. There’s a sense that the state didn’t do its job in constraining markets. And there’s a confusion about what a capitalist state is.

Continue reading →

Posted in: Imperialist strategy, Political Economy, Revolutionary Strategy.

Why the push for austerity?

Aug 5th, 2010
by John Steele.
10 comments

This piece poses the following problem: In the face of the worst recession of the post-WW2 period, a recession whose effects were mitigated only through unprecedentedly massive government bailouts and stimulus, at a time when there is a danger of the recession’s becoming “double-dip” and prospects for long-term economic growth are far from robust, the policy impetus within the European-American ruling class(es) is oriented toward government budget-cutting and fiscal austerity. Why?

It seems to me this is a real question, and Doug Henwood’s speculations seem hardly adequate. I’m hoping some who read khukuri might propose, or discuss, some reasons for this phenomenon.

Reprinted from the recent Left Business Observer #128.

Jonesing for a slump

by Doug Henwood

Having successfully avoided depression through a massive, largely coordinated, stimulus program, the world bourgeoisie now looks ready to reverse it—some because they think it a success, and others because they think it was a failure. This is a very dangerous business.

Continue reading →

Posted in: Political Economy.

Uses of Fanaticism

Jul 31st, 2010
by John Steele.
No comments yet

Originally published on Unemployed Negativity; thanks to Nate at What in the hell… for pointing to this. There is also a good short review by Richard Seymour at Lenin’s Tomb. Alberto Toscano has translated several works by Alain Badiou, including The Century and Logics of Worlds, and has written The Theatre of Production: Philosophy and Individuation between Kant and Deleuze.

Consider Me a Fan:

Brief Review of Toscano’s Fanaticism: On the Uses of an Idea

Jason Read

The current age could be described as one that is opposed to fanaticism. Fanaticism is the name that we have given our enemy in the current “war on terror,” but the contemporary opposition to fanaticism goes beyond the specific spectre of Islamic terror. Fanaticism is the generic name of what must be opposed at all cost. This is the lesson that seems to have been drawn from the previous century: the various crimes of the past, Stalinism, Fascism, and Nazism, have been stripped of their specific political and historical conditions and reduced to the original sin of fanaticism. In order to get some sense of this opposition to a generic an unspecified fanaticism, one only has to read some of the critiques of neoliberal policy (and neoconservative ideology), which do not focus on its disastrous effects or ill-conceived philosophy, but on the “fanatical” dimension of its adherent’s belief. Fanaticism is a criticism of the way one holds their ideas, and not the ideas themselves: as such it can be applied to any idea.

Continue reading →

Posted in: Book Review.