'Has the era of social revolution arrived?'
With reference to Kazuo Konishi's 'the Maturity and Demise of Capitalism'
Japan-based WSPUS member, Mike Schauerte, recently recorded a half-hour talk with this title on the Discord system. To listen to the talk please follow this link:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1tYfJixOyi_Y-cllyUToncUqefgfnIycM/view
Very interesting and easy to
Very interesting and easy to follow talk. Contains some issues familiar to those of us who have followed various Marxist influenced analysis relating to the 'tendency of the falling rate of profit' and the historical shift from the formal to the real domination of capital and the impact of the increased financialization of modern capital etc. The questions asked at the end are spot on and provide much worthy of further discussion particularly in terms of the relationship between the political and social nature of revolutionary change or it's potential emerging within the existing framework of modern capitalism.. Perhaps of as much or more interest to left communists and 'communiser' tendencies as to the spgb or other libertarian communists who post here.
One silver lining of the
One silver lining of the pandemic is the profusion of online talks on numerous diverse topics.
There was a follow-up live discussion yesterday (20/6) rather than a recorded talk where MS discusses his ideas with others which will hopefully be online sometime in the future, Mike.
When it appears (if it does) I'll post an update
Mike, for the audio recording
Mike, for the audio recording of the subsequent discussion of this talk, go to
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/audio/has-the-era-of-social-revolution-arrived/
Thanks to ajj for that. I
Thanks to ajj for that. I wouldn't recommend people bothering with the preliminary Part one of the discussion but there are a few useful comments in part 2 even if the discussion fails to really get into Mike's attempt to explore in more depth the potential relationship between the changing 'objective' and 'subjective' factors actually within the development in modern capitalism rather than simply comparisons and contrasts with the early emergence of capitalism itself. The spgb mindset isn't perhaps too open to reassessing it's preformed ideas about the relationship between class struggle and class or socialist consciousness in terms of possible 'cycles of class struggle' without having to classify and reject any changes short of revolution as simply reformism.
Mike Schauerte has followed
Mike Schauerte has followed this up with a useful short 2 part article in the Socialist Standard based on an interpretation of the work by Japanese Marxist scholar Samezo Kuruma here;
https://worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2022/no-1409-january-2022/reading-capital-as-crisis-theory-part-1/ and...
https://worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2022/no-1410-february-2022/reading-capital-as-crisis-theory-part-2/
A good basic intro that reasserts the validity Marx's concept of the tendency of the rate of profit to decline and discusses the relevance of various counteracting tendencies without moving on to any real conclusions as to the material outcome of that in terms of the current social an economic crisis of global capitalism.