Matticks Review of Reichelt and Rubin: Sucks

Angelus, that book has been on my shelf for like two years. It's just too fucking long and repetitive. He also has this weird technocratic style of writing which makes it even more difficult. But I've read other stuff by him:

1. A longer piece in "Zur Konfusion des Wertbegriffs", which is a collection co-written with H. Paragenings. It's got most of his critique of Backhaus and Reichelt. Very much recommended.

2. Shorter stuff in the "Wissenschaftliche Mitteilungen" notebooks (a yellow one and a red one, can't remember the names ). The yellow one was particularly good.

As far as I can see, the guy likes to repeat himself a lot. After browsing through "Der dialektische Widerspruch..." it seemed to me that the gist is in his other writings as well.

Anyway, I like what he does. He's extremely pedantic and always tries to stick to what Marx says (he fiercely criticizes Heinrich for suggesting that Marx may have been wrong on the money-commodity; he would also never concede that Marx's systematic method is somehow "contaminated" by history). In my view, that's a good thing if you're trying to understand what Marx meant and come up with the most consistent interpretation without modifying Marx. (Of course it can be a bad thing too.)

Apparently, now he's writing a book on the value-price relationship. It should be out 2012 IIRC.

Fear not Angelus, I'm well aware of the political implications behind these seemingly abstract academic war of positions. That Kicillof & Starosta piece is actually far worse in it's implications than you give it credit for. They are not simply committing objectivist errors of "physiologism", if you look, they are attempting to recompose the entire orthodox programme. Very stale beer in new bottles. Economic determinism, the determination of class consciousness by capital alone, the objectivist breakdown of capitalism due to it's internal contradictions - in fact the total necessity of Grossman-style krisentheorie (i put that graphic there for a reason!) given the complete evacuation of class struggle as a transformative force. This is not just neo-Othodoxy, it's Stalinism 2.0. The only difference being that between history repeating itself first as tragedy, second as farce - Stalinism 2.0 is stalinism as farce. The original physically liquidated the class struggle through secret police, torture, murder and the gulag. Yet, with that, stalinist propaganda was always careful to remain pedestrian, never openly expressing it's real hostility to the class. Today's Stalinism 2.0, lacking the apparatus to physically liquidate the working class, and filled with the reckless arrogance only true academic ignorance can bring, liquidates the working class theoretically. Take this, for example:

Yes, the struggle for the 8 hour day was not actually brought about by working class struggle, but the movement of reproduction of capital. Capital gave us the 8 hour day, the struggle was secondary window-dressing.

Just in case you though that was an aberration:

So much for "the emancipation of the workers is the task of the workers themselves", not to mention, "all history is the history of class struggle". Kautsky would have blushed. Truly, the hegelian totality is the syphillis of philosophy.

In relation to your point 1 - I entirely agree, the grand irony of these self-appointed guardians of marxist orthodoxy (the anti-proletarian marxists) is that their notion of abstract value being the basis distribution in a post-capitalist society is profoundly Proudhonian (although, as you mentioned, the idea of course goes back to Warren, Owen and Grey in the early socialist movement)

Hey All, Bonefeld has a critique of Kicillof & Starosta and of De Angelis in a recent Capital & Class. If anyone wants to read it but doesn't have access to a library and/or subscription pm me and I'll email it to you.
cheers
Dave

Sounds like Kautskyite heresy to me!

- The Economic Doctrines of Karl Marx

Pretty much exactly the same thing is said in 'A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy', but my point was more along the lines of it would be reductionist to reduce 'orthodox' Marxism to a kind of singular narrative, whether bad or good, and especially to reduce it to one in which Marx's understanding of value as a social relationship was singularly obscured by a Ricardian substantialism. Nor is that understanding necessarily obscured by semantics about whether Marx had a positive economic theory or a purely critical analysis of political economy. Not to put too fine a point on it but what irritates me about a lot of modern work on Marx is when they always get around to denouncing 'Second International Marxism' with singular phrases when they've just spent pages carefully examining the threads in Marx's own development.

Having got a copy off Dave (thanks!) and just finished it, I have to say this rocks. Not that I couldn't make suggestions for one or two tweaks in places (e.g. I think Bonefeld misses the mediating role of alienated labour in the relation between concrete labour and abstract labour, thus overlooking some of de Angelis's relevance...), but that's for another thread (if enough people have read it). I also note that Kicillof and Starosta have responded to Bonefeld in the most recent C&C, so I look forward to getting my hands on that, also.

For my own tuppence worth, I wasn't suggesting that a particular stance on value theory necessary maps directly onto a particular political tradition in a straightforward "if and only if" one-to-one relation. However, there is, imo, an identifiable set or assemblage of orthodox tropes that are mutually interdependent and self-reinforcing. The actual set membership is debateable and fuzzy, but would include things like:

* strong economic determinism
* forces of production (transhistorical) primary, relations of production (historically specific) secondary
* mode of production strongly determines social superstructure and consciousness
* consciousness divides into false consciousness and objectively "correct" consciousness - discernable by scientific enquiry
* historical development determined by internal objective "laws of motion", rather than class struggle
* inevitable breakdown crisis of capitalism due to internal contradictions rather than class struggle

and the above orthodox "syndrome" is nearly always allied to a political project for the replacement of capitalism with a form of state socialism (occasionally in democratic council form) in which socially necessary labour time is the measure for distribution on a "to each according to deed" basis (whisper it... a la Proudhon).

And that project, for obvious reasons, is not really compatible with a value theory that maintains that getting rid of capitalism necessarily requires abolishing abstract labour.

Well it appears according to your definition that I have something of the orthodox disease. Maybe I should see the ultra-left doctor

We need to unpack that statement- there's so much jammed into it:

1. "inevitable breakdown--" yeah, well, the breakdown, such as it is, is inevitable. Capital cannot maintain sufficient self-valorisation; it cannot aggrandize labor power at an intensity in rate or mass to maintain its own expansion.

2. "crisis of capitalism"-- well, yeah, there's a crisis, and crisis is critical, necessary to the restoring accumulation. Doesn't mean capitalism disappears; means it reconstitutes itself in its very decomposition.

3. "due to internal contradictions rather than class struggle"--- ummh.... class struggle is exactly that specific, critical, inevitable internal contradiction of capital.

The, uh, sweep of this argument is problematic to me.

A) Viewing the phenomena of orthodox Marxism as simply a "mutually interdependent and self-reinforcing" sets of ideas seens to abandons anything like materialist analysis.

IE, the approach more on the order of Max Weber's "protestant ethic and the rise of capitalism" rather Marx. Rather than seeing "mutually interdependent and self-reinforcing" ideas causing later-day State-capitalists to take various position, it seems more pertinent to look at the material forces that built official Stalinist "orthodox Marxism".

B) The argument structure creates worse kind of "Amalgem". It is this absurd, vast bundle of accusations. You can accuse any group of any "crime" or "error" of anyone else of the group.

Are you against any instance of any of these ideas? Since the ideas don't actually logically imply each other, what generates their mutual reinforcement? Human psychology? Their magnetic attraction?

C) Like Artesian said on crisis. Also, the use of crisis theory isn't to predict some date of extreme crisis but to understand the details, structures and dynamics of the crisis in general. And by the way, I have found Artesian to be one of the most articulate writers on the subject in the last few years.

Further, I vaguely get the sense Ocelot's anti-orthodox argument articulates a perspective of many weak breaks or quesi-breaks with Stalinism, especially that of Italian Autonomism. Rather than say what the Stalinists are and be something revolutionary instead, you look at their wooden positions negate them piecemeal.

I ain't got no quarrel with that. My argument is more with the "final crisis" school of Robert Kurz and his droogies, who want to derive a historical end of capitalism from Marx's categorical critique.

I take no exception to that. Nothing makes my eyes glaze over faster than crisis-mongering.

I mean, capitalism doesn't fall, it has to be shoved. It doesn't die, it has to be killed.

Hey, and I take no exception to that. As a matter of fact, that's the key to apprehending what drives capitalism-- why Marx referred to it as contradiction in motion.

We get this a lot-- about how the "technical transformation" of production is primary and the social relations secondary-- as if the former determined the latter. It's not so Virginia. Wasn't so in the origins of capitalism, in the dispossession of the direct producers from the land, or from home production of textiles, clothing etc. It was the "social relation," as embodied in market relations that set the tune, sang the song, and made everybody else pay.

I've had people tell me that it was the development of steam power that created capitalism... when in fact it was the wage-relation that propelled the application of steam power.

Interesting book on this is Robert Allen's The British Industrial Revolution in Global Perspective

Have to say, I am strongly economic deterministic, provided we grasp that economics is nothing but concentrated history, and history is the history of the social organization of labor.

Have to say again, I am strongly mode of production determines social superstructure and consciousness. Ummh....unless we think the romance with Friedman et al wasn't a reflection of the slowing rate of profitability and the need of the bourgeoisie to attack the living standards of the working class and transfer wealth up the social ladder.

Don't know about that consciousness and false consciousness stuff. I try to avoid those discussions.

On the last two points, historical development is in fact determined by the internal laws of motion of capital, which is the class struggle, the need for continuous valorisation, which originates in the conflict between labor and the conditions of labor.

I really don't see how or why we don't see that each, the "internal contradictions" and the class struggle, exists in and through each other. Kind of why I'm so partial to overproduction as an explanation for capital's great "successes" and failures-- its miserable glory and glorious misery.

Well, now that I have thoroughly confused all the issues.....time to go home.

Rubin / S. A. Bessonow et al., Dialektik der Kategorien. Debatte in der UdSSR (1927-29) link

(sorry about the size, say when there's any other problems)

Unfortunately it hasn't Rubin's 100 page responses-to-critiques-appendix, and certainly not the critiques themselves.

I don't know why you think it's labour intensive. The title of the journals is latinized and we have the year, issue and page-numbers for Rubin's articles so that's no excuse. Fuck Devi Dumbadze, I'm asking you. Give it a try when you have time, FOR THE SAKE OF THE YEARS RUBIN SPENT IN PRISON.

Anyway, a couple of other possibly interesting articles I stumbled on:

Jürgen Albohn Kritik der Wertkritik

Daniel Dockerill Wertkritischer Exorzismus statt Wertformkritik
(Zu Robert Kurz’ „Abstrakte Arbeit und Sozialismus“)

Wow, do you get an erection when you use that tough language and tell us how prole you are and don't even know how to use a library?

It makes my 36 years in the railroad industry look like ballet class for pre-schoolers. I'm so ashamed.

Have you noticed I put up the link to Dialektik der Kategorien?

It's a discussion with Bessonow mostly, but 20 other economists participate.
The afterword by projekt klassenanalyse looks interesting (it starts with Mattick's review).

I was hoping you could teach me that

What I was referring to was things like Mattick's reworking/review of Henryk Grossman's Accumulation... - The Permanent Crisis - Henryk Grossman’s Interpretation of Marx’s Theory Of Capitalist Accumulation

I don't have the German for Grossman's original tome, but if Mattick (tenous link to OP) and WP (see WP: Grossman#The logical and mathematical basis of the law of breakdown whence I got the formula above) - are anything to go by, then we are in fact talking of a complete absence of working class action in any "final breakdown" causation. For Mattick (and the other Grossman fans) class struggle is not "that specific, critical, inevitable internal contradiction of capital", but, at best, a mere epiphenonemon.

OK, I wasn't suggesting that OM was simply a "meme". I agree that for a set of ideas to gain hold of bodies of people so as to become a historical force, there also have to be material drivers and interests at play. But to fully explore the origins and materialist roots of OM, you need a book or at least a pretty hefty pamphlet. You can't take everything left out of a forum post as positive assertion of a lack of materialist grounding.

ii) Stalinism was a form of orthodox Marxism (OM), but not it's origins, which lie with Kautksy and Bebel (and, whisper it, Bernstein) and the Erfurt Programme, especially the version of "Marxism" that Kautsky put down in the official political commentary on the (minimum) Erfurt Programme - The Class Struggle. Marxist writers since at least post-WW2 have used various terms - "classical Marxism", "traditional Marxism" as well as the "orthodox" tag, but they've all accepted the existence of a particular "church" of Marxism, an orthodoxy that crystallised, like all orthodoxies, in the repression of the first major heresy - in this case, Bernsteinian revisionism. Even today, the ne plus ultra argument amongst the orthos is to compare your opponents views to Bernstein in some way (even if most of them are very hazy on what Berstein actually proposed).

But I think the ideas are logically connected. If the determination of culture and consciousness is strongly economically determined, and the proletariat are destined to become the gravediggers of capitalism, then you require a notion of "false consciousness" to explain why large numbers of proles keep appearing to cling to worldviews or forms of consciousness at odds with the one's they "should" have, according to historical materialist science. SImilar connections can be found between the other pillars of the faith. But again, I'm hardly the first person to identify these tropes - to which we could have added a particular reading of the Preface of the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy - as defining orthodox or "classical" Marxism.

Read that Mattick piece, then tell me what he really means is that class struggle is the internal crisis.

If you think that's an isolated case, then compare and contrast to the whole Monthly Review school of Sweezy, Magdoff et al down to the recent book on the crisis by Foster and Magdof fils, "The great financial crisis: causes and consequences", which defends their long-held thesis that capitalism has been stuck in a long-term decline in profitability since the Depression of the 1930s.

Grumpy cat was kind enough to get me a copy of the Kicillof and Starosta response as well, which I read over the weekend - I disagree, unsurprisingly. If anybody fancies discussing the Bonefeld v Kicillof & Starosta debate on value theory, say aye, and I'll throw up another thread.

Don't have any links or quotes right now but this was basically Pannekoek's argument that Mattick and Grossman ignore the class struggle. Mattick's (probably correct) counter was that Pannekoek was making an unwarranted division between crisis and class struggle, the whole point is that the former engenders the latter. ZeroNowhere has read the whole of Grossman's book in the original Spanish so he might be able to shed some light but I'm led to believe there may be some confusion of terminology inasmuch as the implications of breakdown etc are not exactly what Grossman was going for, plus there is in fact an entire chapter in Grossman's book dedicated to the problem of the agency of the working-class. And finally, and probably most damningly for those who want to draw, ugh, 'grand narratives' (would like to confirm here that I'm not a post-modernist but that term is appropriate here) about the universal and unthinking evil 'orthodox Marxism', Grossman positions himself firmly against Kautsky's position on crisis in that book, since Kautsky had at least on Grossman's interpetation rejected the idea of capitalist breakdown in the course of the revisionist debates.

I am not sure, but at a guess I'd say that Grossman's book has been translated into Spanish in full, not a partial translation like the current English version IIRC.

Yeah, not the original Spanish, but the whole book is nonetheless translated from German into Spanish, while it is only partially translated into English. In any case, Grossman addresses some of the misinterpretations of his work in a 1931 letter to Paul Mattick:

In the letter, Grossman also discusses his use of Bauer's schema, saying that he emphasized in his book how the schema is unrealistic as a model of actual capitalist development. Sure enough, in his book, he criticizes Bauer for confusing the schema with the actual course of capitalist accumulation:

Interestingly, in his book, he also criticized Luxemburg for having a mechanical conception of the downfall of capitalism:

So one should at least consider what Grossman had to say... (also, Grossman and Pannekoek's critique has been discussed here a bit: http://libcom.org/forums/news/economic-crisis-18122007?page=27&quicktabs_1=1)